Pledge Drive

I wonder if you have noticed that the posts on this site have gone from two a week, to one a week.  This is partly because of the time of year - for much of the northern hemisphere fitting out has just gotten under way.  But I suspect that it is also because our regular contributors (over there on the right) are slowly but surely getting their boats into optimal contition.  Oh sure, there will be the occasional project, but the big flush that happens when you get a new boat has ended for most of them.  In fact, my backlog now has only two projects in it - both from Eolian.  When those are gone (two weeks from now...) I will have nothing more to post here.

I think you know what that means:  new blood is needed.

This is your site.    For this to work out for all of us, everybody needs to contribute - think of this as a pot luck dock party.

Come on now.  All of you have a small project of one kind or another that others would be interested in seeing. Contribute to the feast:

• Write it up and send it to SmallBoatProjects at gmail dot com

- or -

• If you have already written it up on a blog somewhere and are willing to share, just tell me where in the wide world of the Internet to find it, and I'll come and get it.

- or -

• Give me permission to "mine" your blog for projects. Anybody who is writing a blog about boating has numerous small projects buried in there. I'll ferret them out, if you let me.  No, I won't put your content on here without your permission.

Every posting will feature a link to your article (if there is one) and a link to your blog (if you have one).  In addition, all contributors will permanently have a link in the "Contributors" box on the right side of the blog. This ought to drive some of the traffic that this site is seeing back to your site.  I will not take any recent posts (unless you tell me otherwise) - that way this site will not be in competition with yours. Instead, it will hopefully serve to "reactivate" some of your older posts.

But the most important benefit you'll get is the warm feeling of having helped someone thru a problem - one that you have solved. And we will all be the richer for it.

Pitch in!

Indoor Projects

Onboard s/v Aletheia Nate & Jenn each take on a project to make life aboard better!

Here are pictures of two small boat projects we've completed (or began) since inception. All you need is looking for something to do or feeling a need for success to get going.

While Eric & Amanda were visiting, Eric and Nate installed this LED rope lighting under the galley cabinets. It was already on board and wasn't doing any good sitting in a dark hole. It actually adds a great deal of light while cooking or as mood-lighting. The dimmer is a nice touch too!

A dimmer for extra galley lighting

Tiny LED lights give a nice ambiance

Yesterday, I finally felt motivated to pull out some fabric I've had for some time intending to make a closet curtain to cover up clothing, foul weather gear, computers, etc. There used to be a big ole' heavy wooden door where there is now nothing. We removed the door in Freeport, ME. It's a very simple rectangular piece of fabric, but not being much of a sewer, the thought hemming and hand-sewing the 25"x 58" borders sounded like a lot of work for ME. But as Aunt Bev told me, what do you think they did before sewing machines?! Good point. Also, with the fabric staring at me, I thought today is the day. I've hemmed the borders and will sew the edges within the next 1-2 days and assemble with onboard resources of eye screws and bungee. It will also add a bit of color to all the dark wood.

Hemming the edges

Current visual

A closet curtain in progress

Completed look to follow...

Cheers,
Jenn

From Curtains to Blinds - A More Streamlined, Private Option

Please welcome new contributor Dana who lives aboard her Challenger 32, s/v NoName - yes, that's right! Her boat has not yet been named, and she has blogged about that great dilemma as well.  But for her first appearance here, Dana deals with replacement of the old curtains that came with her boat:

Old Curtains and Tracks

When I first viewed my boat-to-be, I was impressed with the amount of light in the cabin. For a monohull, and especially an old one, it seemed airy and bright and was one of the things that made me fall in love with her.   Although I scrutinized the details of the inside of the cabinets, lazarettes, bilge, and oven, the curtains escaped my attention since I considered them a frivolous, easy change that could be ignored in the short term.

Old Curtain Track Above Port Light

Once I moved aboard, I saw the situation more clearly.  The curtains were thread-bare and stained like something found on a mummy.  Above the galley a section of fabric was held together with masking tape. The tracks were brown plastic strips held onto the walls with rusted screws. The curtains only slid on their tracks with the utmost effort and it quickly became irritating to open them each morning and close them at night.  There was no real privacy onboard through the thin, gauzy barrier, and something needed to change.

I researched a few different options for tracks for the windows, but they all looked similar to what I had, and I hated the look when the curtains were open. I ruled out the one-way vinyl window film because I felt that I still wouldn’t feel I had my privacy, didn’t want to lose any of the sunlight during the day, and I didn’t want my neighbors to think I was pimping out with mirrored windows.

Eventually, I settled on the idea of blinds.  I searched online for days comparing options and prices and decided that the cordless cellular blinds were the way I wanted to go. Options include light filtering vs. blackout blinds, single or double cell,  top down/bottom up, and cordless with a half dozen or more color options.  Even If I didn’t live with a cat whose favorite game is to bat around a rope, I felt cordless was more desirable, and due to the size of the head rail system, I stayed with single cell (outside mount – inside mount is for homes with deep window wells). I chose a light filtering blind in a cream color that matched my headliner. I found the Super Value Cordless Single Cellular shades from Blindster.com were on sale and a good deal.  With 5 blinds of varying customs sizes from 46″ x 14″ to 28″ x 14″, my total, with shipping was $228. That was about $50 for the bigger windows and $40 for the smaller window.   I also purchased stainless steel screws for another $20 because the included screws weren’t for the marine environment.

While I waited for my order, I started the process of the removal of the current system.  The tiny screws holding the existing plastic track in place were rusted flat heads.  After an hour or so of unsuccessful attempts with my smallest screwdriver to unscrew them, I resorted to using a small cat’s paw tool which I have had since my old house restoration days, with a queasy feeling in my stomach.   It seemed barbaric in the situation, and I occasionally had to use a hammer with the claw to get the old rusted screw out.   The wood around the rusted screws was stained, and so was the wall under the tracks.  I lightly sanded the thin mahogany veneer where the tracks were, cleaned the area, applied Orange Oil and hoped for the best. I filled in the holes with color matched wood filler, but the perceptive eye will always pick out the discoloration of the old track. To do more was going to be a major project, and I was one month in to ownership and not willing to strip/sand/bleach the walls just yet.

Straight and Level are Different

Once the blinds arrived, I ran into another dilemma.  As with an old house, level and straight aren’t always the same thing.  Do you hang them level with the window or the boat?  I am a symmetry person, so this was a big deal for me, and an inconsistent headliner put in before my purchase made it harder. I settled with using a standard measurement above the top of the windows despite what the ceiling was doing.  The head rail was larger than I had envisioned and I had a moment of panic because of the ‘no refund on special order’ policy.  As I tentively tried to hang the first, and largest of the shades, I realized that the distance between the top of the window frame and ceiling were perilously close, and in some cases, just not going to happen.  The headliner braces weren’t put in by a person with a tendency for detail, symmetry, or consistency.  I found a few open, pre-drilled holes, usually near the hull, with nothing in them, just sagging into the field of my new shades, and finished screwing them in to gain just enough room for the head rail. If nothing else, I had improved the ceiling.

Blinds with Clean Modern Privacy

I have installed blinds, including top-down/bottom-up blinds before, and I can only say that people on land with relatively vertical walls have an easy job.  After a few hours of contortions and cursing, the brackets were in place and the blinds snapped in.  This was the pivotal moment.  The blinds came down nicely, and all seem to fit the ordered dimensions.  A quick trek around the outside of the boat with the lights off showed that they proved complete privacy.  From the inside, the looked modern, with clean  modern, with clean lines, but also blended in well with the headline color.  But the best view was to have them opened wide in the morning, where almost all of the available window space let light in, reflecting off the light colored headliner, and making a grey Seattle day a little more cheerful.

Fully Opened Blinds

The best part was that I could do it in 2-3 seconds instead of the time it took to try and drag the curtain slugs through their tracks.

Quick Solution to Bottom Attachment. Notice the Old, Discolored Track with Filled-in Holes.

The next hurdle was to devise a way to attach the bottoms so that they wouldn’t swing on the sloping walls, but were easy to undo each day to let the light in.  The provided holders were of a more permanent variety meant for blinds installed on doors. This took several days and even more consultations with friends for brainstorming. The eventual solution, although not glamorous, was to run a cord through the bottom rail ( the hold for the bottom mount was already there), with a loop on each end attached to tiny cup hooks placed in an old track hole whenever possible. The result is an easy way to attach and unattach the bottom of the blinds. I prefer them up when sailing/motoring so that if I need to run below I have the advantage of an mostly unobstructed view outside, and so I don’t have to fasten them to keep them from swinging.  I have friends that used the same basic blinds, but used magnets on the bottom rail of the blinds and a magnetic strip to keep them anchored down.  From what they’ve said – they feel it was a great improvement over the old blinds and they used the same company.

Although I can still see the ghost of the old tracks, the blinds look streamlined and tidy. They provide complete privacy at night, and during the day allow 95% of the available window space to let sunlight come in, an invaluable commodity in Seattle during the winter.

Shiny and White

This post originally appeared on Windborne in Puget Sound

---

Oooo!  Shiny!

Our rail-mounted BBQ table (it's really a fish cleaning table, but Fish Do Not Fear Me...) was really showing its age. The plastic had suffered extreme UV degredation -  the surface had turned porous and chalky.  And with use, grease and other food stuff soaked into the porosity and then bacteria went to town, meaning that it was porous, chalky and spattered with black spots and streaks.  Truly ugly.  And unsanitary.

So, not too long ago when I went to a garage sale at San Juan Yachts (yup, the place that made the San Juan sailboats...  now they are only making RIBs), I bought a scrap of Starboard for cheap.  Then I cut it up with my trusty little table saw, copying the shapes of the pieces in the old table.  I even used the same screws to put it together.

Not bad for $15 and a couple of hours work in the shop!

Low-Buck Arts & Crafts

It may be officially Spring, but large portions of North America still lie in the icy grip of Global Warming. What's a sailor to do? Brian of Dock Six takes on some projects...

      "In the meadow, we can build a snowman..."
                                              -Felix Bernard



    ......  or not.


      As I write this, the temperature outside has nosedived to around -23 celsius.

      I am not nearly masochistic enough to calculate the windchill.

      If one is a skier, skater, ice fisherman, snowmobiler, snowboarder or snowshoer, one might enjoy freely frolicking in this frozen frontier.
 
      I, however, am none of the above.

      I am a sailor.

     And I am NOT going outside into this fucking frozen freakshow unless I absolutely have to.

      Luckily, I have a punchlist of off-season boat work to keep me occupied  until the lake ceases to be a solid mass entirely, and utterly, incapable of floating a boat.

     Doing something with our wobbly and plain saloon table was near the top of the "Boat projects that can be accomplished from the comfort of SJM" list.

     I've got some ideas for this project, boldly going where I had never gone before, but first: a warm-up project, an  aft cabin amuse-bouche if you will:

     Fixing the TV wall.


      The previous owners installed a small flat screen TV- its removal prior to sale has left an ugly blight in an otherwise very pleasant  aft cabin.

     SWMBO and I ruminated over this disfigurement throughout the season, and finally came up with an idea:

     A piece of scrap luan, some wood glue, and a cheap spreader to quickly, evenly and economically spread the adhesive....

      Then, trim a chart to size...

      Apply the chart to the very sticky board....

   Slather more glue on top, recalling skills vaguely remembered from elementary school art class decoupage projects.  While waiting for all that glue to dry, construct a frame from scrap mahogany trim...

Assemble  and varnish......

 ...and install (right side up) when the weather warms up.

  Right, so, feeling cocky, I got back to that saloon table....

     My initial thought was that we needed a larger table that would tie into the stripper pole, er, compression post. Upon further measuring and headscratching I realized that bigger is not better in this case.  Enlarging the table would make our current expansive and inviting recroom feel like  a cramped and cluttered cell, with a table that would be difficult to move around  and would prevent the locker door under the stove from opening fully.

So, the table can get no bigger.
Okay.
It does, however need to be more stable, so I lengthened the collar underneath, that fits over the post.  Now, no wobble.

But, there is a crapload of winter left, and it is a rather plain table, so I might as well try to figure out marquetry.

     Marquetry, as defined by the OED: "Inlaid work made from small pieces of coloured wood or other materials, used for the decoration of furniture."

     So, a supply run to Lee Valley Tools  was in order.  I needed glue, veneer.... that was pretty much it.

     I still managed to spend damn near $200.

     It's that kind of store.

     I bought a "box of veneer" which was exactly as described- a pizza box full of very thin sheets of a variety of different woods:

Like, 80-100 square feet of the stuff.

The table in question is about 3 square feet.


I quickly cobbled together a low-buck veneer cutting jig- a piece of scrap ply for a bed, some aluminum angle and scraps of luan trimmed to create 90 degree, 45 degree and 22.5 degree guides to simplify the math...

   

 ... and discovered the tricks to cutting very thin, very brittle pieces of wood...  after destroying a bunch of very thin, very brittle pieces of wood.

Luckily, I had a lot of it.

After marking the center on the table, and the half way polints on all four sides, I laid out a simple geometric design, and proceeded to cut and tape and glue and clamp and swear my way to an end result;

   

       It still needs some sanding and a few more coats of varnish, but I'm not completely embarassed by the end result.

    And I still have a crapload of veneer left over.

   And a crapload of winter.

   I rummaged through the scrap pile and did some sketching and came up with a plan for a simple cockpit table.  A little ply, some reclaimed teak trim from DonorBoat, and the basics are done:

 

   

   the rough work is done, now it's just a matter of mortising and installing the hinges, final sanding, and finishing.  I'm saving that until next weekend.

   It looks like there's still lots of winter left.




Thanks for checking in, and don't forget to "Talk the Dock!"

Transom Project Complete

Please welcome new contributors Nate & Jenn, newly moved aboard (August, 2014)  their first boat, the 36-foot Allied Princess s/v Aletheia.  Since moving aboard, they have already cruised from Halifax, Nova Scotia down to Ft. Lauderdale, Fla - not bad for less than a year aboard!  And one of the first things new boat owners do is change the lettering on the transom...

We did something cool and fun this morning aboard Aletheia...we gave her an official hailing port on her transom. On top of the two previous owners' hailing ports: Florida, USA and Portland, lays Denver CO!

We scoured local craft and hardware stores all over the East Coast only to find 3-inch letters that come individually and this likely would have been a bigger project trying to match each letter, evenly spaced, to my OCD-perfection. After asking the Universe for where to look next, a fellow blogger at TheBoatGalley.com suggested  DoItYourselfLettering.com. Winner! After just a few minutes on the website, t'was a no brainer. Customization out the wazoo, with hundreds of fonts, more than a dozen colors, sizes and several grades of vinyl, depending on your specific needs. 

Before beginning such a project, we checked the requirements for US Coast Guard Documented vessels. According to the USCG, the required letter height on a recreational vessel needs to be at least 4" tall. DoItYourSelfLettering had everything we needed, and we ordered it from the boat! No more traipsing around!

Since we only need a hailing port, we matched the font as best we could with her name. It costs $20, shipping included. Other signage companies can easily charge upright of $75-100 for similar apply-it-yourself lettering. 

Denver, CO came in one long piece with easy, detailed installation instructions - fairly foolproof. They even guarantee "anyone" can install the lettering and if there are any problems with the installation, they will send a replacement at no cost. I'll admit I was a bit nervous, but we walked through our installation process a few times and it came out great! No need to request a replacement! Thank you DoItYourselfLettering for making me feel like a pro!

I highly recommend this company both for personal and professional projects.

Here are some pics of our install:

Step 1: Green tape applied as a "hinge" to set the location of the name

Step 2: Remove the backing off the label

Step 3: Pull taut and adhere to the surface, scraping the overlay to remove any air bubbles 

Fine-tuning

Since we have drainage holes on the transom, we cut around to make sure the surface area is flat. So far, so good! 

It's working!

Complete Success in about 10 minutes!

That's one less project from the to-do list. 

Love to all,
Nate & Jenn