Monday 13 August 2012

Doing Things The Hard Way

Continuing on from the last entry.
Back to T-A on the Wednesday afternoon and removed the rubble and remaining sawdust from around the bow thruster tube but still evidence of dampness so left things at that. As the wiring was finished capped off the cable troughing and called it a day.
Thursday back down to check on the water tank. All seemed dry so new connectors fitted and started to take on water. Everything was fine so added a bottle Milton and continued to fill right to the top to ensure that the tank was completely sterilised. Still watching connections for leaks but not to worry, all good; just as the tank reached capacity bubbles started appearing round the inspection cover, not good.
Scraped away the spray foam overspray from the cover and found source of leak down right hand side. The cover was held down by seven (8 holes) zinc plated roofing bolts which were already showing signs of rust. Noted that the holes were countersunk so domed head bolts seemed inappropriate. Managed to remove two bolts but the rest were solid so left them until I had better equipment. Next day went back armed with impact driver and ½” flat bit, which managed to remove three more but only chewed up the heads of the last two.
At the moment I don’t have time to start draining the system again, drilling out the old bolts and cleaning out the tank so settled for clearing the rust from the bolt holes, applying more mastic and using stainless bolts where I could. At least it is secured by eight bolts now.   

The area around the bow thruster tube had dried out and got a coating of ‘Waxoyl’ before being filled with spare ballast from under the bed.
Since then it’s been a case of catch up in the garden and woodworking at home. The new battery box is made from 18mm birch ply and has had it’s first coat of bilge paint.
Figured it was better use of space to have it on top of the bow thruster tube.
Busy making new shelves in ash for the kitchen area to take the microwave and  crockery. Started out with timber recovered from the old cupboard in the lounge, reshaped it slightly and then to get a raised edge routed out all the wood behind to lower the height of the shelf and then added some grooves to stop plates slipping. The top shelf will be for cups and the rounded ends are to take the cereal bowls
There will be a raised rail above each shelf to stop things falling off, the curves were
cut on the band saw and I’m quite pleased with the result.
If you are thinking that plates will still roll off when the boat rocks.
No problem

Square plates J

1 comment:

Tom and Jan said...

I like the shelves!