Boarding pass please

Mike of s/v Chalice Is building himself a boarding ladder, from scratch.  Mike is among the leaders in the "He who has the most tools wins" contest.  And not only does he have them, but he clearly knows how to use them:

The new boarding ladder. Took me almost six months to get the hardware. Good thing I was in no hurry. I was glad to get it actually. Instead of a bunch of picture, I made a slide show. You can look at them individually on Picasa.

Why not make your own?

Over at Sail Delmarva, Drew takes advantage of all that "good stuff you save just in case" that we all have, to fashion a set of wheels for his kayak:

Of course, this concept could work for a tender of any sort, so I thought it worth sharing. I've seen them built of everything from angle iron to PVC to copper pipe fittings; only imagination limits the options.

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Sure, you can buy them in the store, but most I've seen are home-built. These took a few hours to puzzle out and piece together; a good father-daughter project, better than time plopped in front of the TV or... on the internet.

 

The lumber is 3/4" x 8" boards left over from a shelving project. We screwed them together with deck screws; I got lazy on the pre-drilling on the one side and the board split a bit, though it doesn't seem to have made a difference. The curve was transferred from the kayak to the saddles using a compass (the front and rear saddles are slightly different). The axle is a length of 1/2" brass rod left over from something, threaded on each end. The wheels are Home Depot mower wheels for ~ $15.00, the only bit I couldn't find on the scrap heap.

The foam was cut from a scrap work-out mat tile. The pipe stubs are scrap 3/4" PVC and fit into drainage holes molded into the kayak hull--these prevent shifting.

The wheels are lashed to the kayak with 1/2-inch line and a snug truckers hitch. I did a sloppy job in the picture--lightening was starting to flash. They normally cris-cross between the axle and the wooden frame.

We throw all our gear in the kayak, grab the handle, and start walking. Miles are possible on a good path, and we have done just that on occasion to reach a prime spot. More often, it's a matter of a few hundred yards. Sure, a sturdy person can heft a kayak on a shoulder, but a second trip will be needed for a day's worth of gear. With the wheels a child (or a tired adult) can tote the works. Well worth a little shop time, and I enjoy turning scraps into something useful.

Get the point?

Jeff on s/v C'est la Vie is working on refinishing his interior.  What caught my eye in this project was that he is using painter's points.  What are these?  They are little plastic pyramids with a sharp tip, designed to hold a chair, say, up so that its legs can be finished all the way to the bottom.  I really don't know why I don't have some of these - they are now on the list for our next run to the home improvement store.

A frontal passage over the weekend finally ushered in some dry and dare I call 83 degrees - cooler weather.  Thus creating much improved conditions for applying Bristol Finish to some of the interior trim that we have removed in our efforts to paint lockers and replace head plumbing.   Fortunately we already have the 12X12 screen tent up the the backyard.  This provides a shady and gnat free area for finishing the wood.

We are so impressed with the ease of application, the quality results, and the endurance in the tropical sun of the Bristol Finish that we have decided to use it on interior applications.  In the past we have used a Minwax Helmsman polyurethane for the interior wood.  After four years much of the interior wood we refinished is in need of a fresh coat.  Why not bring the Bristol Finish inside if for no other reason than we only need to carry one type of wood finish for future touch ups.

I have also recently discovered the plastic pyramid paint stands.  After catching another cruiser using them in the boat yard, I found them at Lowe's.   These widgets are amazing!

Out o' bullets

That's it - I'm out of projects.

The next post here will come when someone contributes one, or when I do one on Eolian...

Better living thru chemistry

While Jane was Back Home Again In Indiana, I decided to tackle a pretty disgusting task: cleaning out the shower pan in the aft head.

After living aboard all these years, I am embarrassed to admit that all I have ever done was to clean off the hair catcher. And slowly but surely the pan got dirtier and dirtier. Despite bleach dousings, a layer of hair, bacteria, and what Joe of s/v Tropic Star once termed "human chutney", all in a matrix of soap scum had built up in there

I attacked it first with a scraper, then with a variety of products designed to remove soap scum. Without much luck. Finally I settled in with wet/ dry sand paper - but even that didn't work well - the gummy deposit slowly rolled up in little balls.

While frustratedly sipping a beer, it came to me: work on the other end of the molecule! Soap scum is the insoluble calcium and magnesium salts of long chain organic acids. All of those water-based household products work on the tiny acid/salt end of the molecule, and further require a chemical reaction with it to work effectively. I wetted a rag with mineral spirits and simply wiped the scum off! The mineral spirits dissolved the scum by dissolving the long organic end of the scum. Really, it just wiped off.

With a clean surface, a coat of Brightsides urethane enamel spread cleanly without fisheyes, and really spiffed it up.

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This post originally appeared on Windborne in Puget Sound.

Who is that masked man?

Please welcome new contributor Bob of m/v Brave Spirit!  Bob is a wood worker.  One of the things I have noticed about wood workers is that they seldom like to build one-offs.  It seems that the first step in many wood working projects is the construction of templates and jigs - so you can do it again.  In fact, wood workers are tool makers - a high profession.

So how does that tie in here?  Well, Bob had stripped the teak caprails on Brave Spirit down to bare wood, and was faced with masking off 34 stanchion bases, first for polysulphide sealant, and then for varnish.  But unlike you and I, Bob set about this the way a wood worker would.

He made templates for cutting the masking tape.  First he cut holes in a sheet of 3/16" Plexiglas that were slightly larger than the stanchion bases.  And then in a second sheet of Plexiglas, he cut holes of a size to accommodate the stanchion pipes. 

It works like this:  stretch a couple or three pieces of masking tape over one of the large holes.  Using a sharp knife, cut out the masking tape circle against the edge of the Plexiglas.  Now, what you have still on the Plexiglas is a perfect form for masking off the caprail for application of the polysulphide.  The masking tape circle that you cut out?  Well, that gets centered over one of the small holes and gets its center cut out, making a donut perfectly suitable for masking off the stanchion base itself.  Like this (only in this picture, Bob has already applied the polysulphide and pulled the tape off the caprail):

But there's more.  Bob bought some cheap plastic scrapers and re-contoured them to make the polysulphide fillets clean, even, and identical:




Now that's what I mean when I say that wood workers are tool makers!