Clever Cover Up

Mike on s/v Chalice shows his carpentry and design skills again, with this cleverly designed cover:

The Cabo Rico has a lot of these oblong holes in it. Most are trimed in teak rings, and I have had to make some new ones to replace the old ones. Well there was one over the nav station, which I thought was strange. It gave access to some wires and that was all. I didn't like the look of an open hole over my head, so some creative hatch making was called for.

Oval holes.

From Update_10_30_07

I did see an idea for a way to build a hatch that would work. It was plastic and only round. So I needed to build an oval one. Here is what I did.

I removed the trim ring. I cheated a little and used the trim ring to get the inside measurements, then I glued up two boards, drilled a hole for the 1\4 inch bolt, used a forstner bit to recess the knob I was going to make. I then used a hole saw to cut the knob, sanded on a belt sander the finger grips. On the inside I made a cross piece that will press down on the hole edge. Then added two pegs to the back to prevent the cross member from spinning. I had to rough up the threads on the bolt a little to make it turn the cross member. If I didn't, then when I opened the hatch, the cross member would not rotate out of the way. The bolt was epoxied into the knob. When closing it, the cross member will hit the pegs and not spin, instead it will tighten down. One could make this fairly water proof with an o-ring for the knob and some silicon in a bead to seal the rim.

The parts.

From Update-8-17-2010

The Backside.

From Update-8-17-2010

Assembled.

From Update-8-17-2010

From Update-8-17-2010

In Use.

From Update-8-17-2010