Peanut butter - epoxy mayonnaise
Housekeeping procedures and family business kept me away from boatyard for the last few weeks. During that time I only managed to oil starboard and port berth foundations - first with Owatrol D1 and then, as an experiment, with D2. I wanted to check if indeed D2 gives varnish-like finish.
It does - after just one coat the wood starts to shine, just like after single coat of varnish. Contrary to D1 - D2 does not smell so ugly so oiling can be done at home. I’ve left berth planks with only one coat - after all they don’t need it - and keep D2 for coating Glypto and ceiling planks on Meritaten. That needs to wait until temperatures go above 5 degrees and days become less humid. D2 with water gives milky-white solution, just like Ouzo or Pastis.
Today I took both berth planks to the boat. After installation they blend nicely with the rest of the cabin.
As I have one more full-size mahogany plywood of proper thickness I went ahead and made pilot berth foundation. Two years ago when I was building it I had no thick enough plywood so I was forced to build it reinforced with wooden beams. That made it a tad too high for madrases and bulky so now I’ll make it properly.
Disassembly went quickly and I cut new plywood using old berth as a mall. The problem with this plywood was that I kept it for a year in my boathouse where it got lots of sun and occasionally droplets of water from the roof. Plywood’s side exposed to elements turned light and developed ugly stains. It took a hell of time to grind them away today - taking care not to remove too much of thin mahogany on the surface. Lessons learned - use plywood as soon as you buy it if you don’t have a proper way of storing it.
Cutting and plaining the edges went quickly. After abrading both sides with 240 paper I started impregnating it as all other - with D1. Luckily weather is mild today - with 6 degrees above zero and no rain Owatrol oiling could be done in the boatyard. Avoiding smell in my home.
As the wood was drying I turned to reparations of main cabin ladder. Due to removed ceiling at cabin sole level the ladder was hanging in the air. I fixed it temporarily last year but it was ugly so now it was time to make it properly. I cut the shape from the remaining piece of plywood using old ladder as a guide.
A bit of adjusting and trying on the boat was needed to match frames curvature. Once I was happy I could cut notches for top step.
This new plate will be glued to the old ladder. This way I don’t need to make the whole structure and will re-use old fittings. As gluing such complex and big shape is always challenging I’ll use pilot screws to keep both parts aligned. Screw holes will later be used for second step support. To get a proper grip in thin plywood I made temporary wooden blocks which will accept long screws.
Tried the assembly on the boat and everything fit nicely.
Last thing to do was to remove old varnish from the ladder and abrade all surfaces with 80 paper, for proper epoxy grip. With Bahco scraper this was a quick and pleasant job.
Once this was done I headed home for the evening, to manage gluing them tonight so I can epoxy-coat everything tomorrow.
For gluing I decided to use Swedish NM Epoxy which I had from the time I was working on my Safir Motoko. This epoxy is less convenient to use than WEST since one needs to weight both solutions for mixing but otherwise it is exceptionally good material. And it has no smell at all, making it perfect for using at home.
To make glue out of it I thickened NM Epoxy with WEST filleting blend. It gave chocolate-like colour. Gluing consistency is mayonnaise - so that it fills all spaces but does not flow so rapidly as non-thickened epoxy.
The amount of epoxy used was 200+110g and turned out to be exactly enough to coat the parts.
Assembly with screws went smoothly but as usual the job was messy. I gathered all squeeze-out and thickened it further to peanut-butter consistency, to add fillets in crucial areas. Gathering dripping epoxy took me an hour before the glue started to cure and no more excess was showing up on the edges.
As usually - you never have enough clamps. And yes - this is my bedroom with epoxy-spider!