2009 building logs

November 2009 Furniture, plumbing and wiring

I decided long ago that I would start at the front of the boat and work back down each hull and then put the sides on before attempting the bridgedeck furniture. So with this in mind I have started the ensuite and walk in robe in each hull, next will be the forward bedrooms. So I daresay I will get a start on the bedrooms this month. I may also get a start on the wiring and plumbing that I threatened to start last month, but as yet I have not started to make furniture where such will pass through.

Nov 3 Walk in wardrobe cabinets

I have already made a tentative start to the starboard hull ensuite and last week made the first steps in the port walk in wardrobe. I am trying something I saw in another build blog of a Farrier 41, a shaped bin, hinged at the bottom to make better use of the chamfer panel space, as it tapers to nearly nothing and makes the space above it almost useless any other way. If it works well I will employ it in both hulls all the way back in each room.

I started by reclaiming some offcuts of 25mm duflex to make the cabinet top, there will be scant room to use it as a top as above it all around will be the hanging clothes but it will be a flat surface nonetheless if we ever decided to iron something ever again or whatever other purpose a bench top might come in handy for in there. Once I had all the offcuts glued together and the piece was large enough to cut the top out of, I marked it out (I had a template of cardboard made) and cut it and dry fit it to see how it worked out. A little tweaking to get the front edges square (or parallel) to the bulkheads and I had my top fitted. From here I will be able to work out the dimensions of the drawer and bin.

I am yet to glue it in of course but having the top in gives a much better idea of the space left to maneuver in the wardrobe and of the space I have to fill with cupboards but it all links back to the size of the top and the height at which it is set.

I set the height at the same height as I have the ensuite vanity top, 820mm. At this height, and with an 80mm kickboard (there is a rule of thumb that kickboards are usually 10% of the height of the cabinet, although most kitchens are 900mm high and have a 150mm kickboard), leaving 740mm internal space and the height at which the chamfer panel turns is 220mm below the height of the top so with a 20mm rail along the top and another 20mm rail below the top drawer I could fit a 200mm drawer and a 500mm hinged bin below it.

I have made the drawer and bin out of 10mm polycore sides and a 3mm epoxy coated ply base. I am going to investigate whether production plastic drawers would save me a lot of time but because of the angle of the chamfer panel I think I would lose too much usable space if I stuck to the traditional shape drawers, but perhaps with oversize drawers I could cut them down with an angled back to suit, but polycore is way over constructed I think, but as I am only likely to have about 6 of them it is not too much trouble to make them.

The chamfer panel is what is known as a tortured panel, that is, it is a flat panel pulled onto the bulkheads under pressure which creates a twist in the panel that creates the hull shape the designer drew but what this does on the other side is create a twist in the panel that cannot be easily (not for me anyway) measured when creating multi-faceted structures against it such as vanity cabinets. By the main bulkhead (BH5) it dissipates to a flat panel so this wont be a problem. Not that is was a massive problem, I find making cardboard stencils the easiest way to be sure to get the correct or close to correct shapes.

I did the best I could to measure and make cardboard stencils and cut the parts for the bin and dry fit it together to see how well it fit. I still found it was out just a little (it was high in one corner and low in the other so that it wobbled when pushed against the bulkhead. This is not really a problem as the only place any drawer needs to be an exact fit is across the front, the only way a drawer touching the hull side is an issue is if it stops the front from fitting flush, square and plumb. I will have false fronts attached to the drawers and with these attached the top will protrude past the front of the drawers by about 5mm.

I trimmed one of the bin ends to try to take the incorrect twist out, there is a twist in it but I had the wrong amount, so the trimming got it closer to correct. I sat it roughly in its place and started on the drawer. I found that when I made the drawer to the cardboard templates I had, the twist in the back pulled the front out of square and if you want it to all look good when finished the fronts of drawers must be as close to square and plumb as you can get them (you can make up a little with packers between the drawer fronts and the drawer but not much. The solution was to glue and tape the front to the sides and base and leave the back off, then once it had set (next day) I could fit the back, torture it down with its twist and it could not pull the front out of alignment. I glued and taped it to set.

Once I had the drawer and bin made I could make the cabinet that they would be fitted to. Cabinet is a bit of an overstatement, it is more just a frame that the drawers and bin could be anchored to. A true cabinet has solid ends, a top and bottom and rails along the back to which a thin back is attached if the cabinet is mounted to a solid wall and rails along the front through which drawers and doors are fitted. I do have one solid end and the bulkhead at one end acts as another solid end so it will only have a vertical rail and then I only need a solid end along the forward end and a couple of horizontal rails that square it all up for the drawer to fit to with drawer runners fitted to a spacer attached to the bulkhead on the aft end and the cabinet end on the other. Along the back I wont even bother having rails, I will just glass it all to the hull side (the back) and the bulkhead.

This is in order to keep the weight to a minimum, there is a top and bottom (kickboard) the same as any other cabinets but I will use the hull and bulkheads in place of solid cabinet ends and employ rails where possible. The tops add the structural strength and the cabinets are just to house the storage, whether that is just a door in front of a shelf or draws or bins. Jo does not like open cabinets that some builders have, although much easier to build they dont look as nice as shiny doors and closed cupboards.

I had all of the parts cut out of duflex along with another spacer that goes between the cabinet side and the bulkhead but protrudes to the front edge that the doors will take, it forms the straight edge to which the fronts are fitted (go have a look in your kitchen) and all of these parts needed to be decored and back filled as they will be exposed edges. These were filled just before knock off the on Sunday night and on Monday night I glued and glassed the cabinet together making special care that the cabinet was square and the front had no twist to it so that the fronts will fit well.

I had intended checking on the cabinet and perhaps fitting the kickboard to the boat so that it could set today and tomorrow I could glass the cabinet in, but today it was 38 Celsius, way too hot to work even though it was a public holiday (for a horse race! yep to our overseas friends we take a day off once a year for a horse race). The heat is only forecast for a day, tomorrow is forecast to be just 21 so a lot better working temperature.

Nov 5 First doorways uni roped

After a blistering Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday cooled to winter like conditions again. I thought the opportunity too good to pass up. I have been avoiding doing the uni ropes in the doorways for a couple of reasons. First it looms as a difficult task given that I need to defy gravity to get the ropes up into the de-cored doorway upside down for more than half their way. And given my apprehension I thought the heat was the last thing I needed adding urgency to the mix. As has always been the case with the build, the jobs I feared the most turn out to be the easiest and go off relatively without drama.

I have a method set out for jobs like this. It requires me to transform from my usual take it as it comes laid attitude to one of studied organization. I have to plan the routine, and each step is in order. So with this in mind I started by cutting a piece of plastic strip long enough to wet out the already cut to length and width uni. I did this last week, by taking a small offcut of uni and rolling it up to see how wide the piece needed to be to neatly fill the slot, it turned out that 400mm would be pretty close and given I have 1300mm wide rolls 430 would be just perfect. The length speaks for itself, but having said that I ended up with a rope 10mm too long that needed to be squeezed into the trench to fit, 10mm less would have been ideal but it worked out in the end. Why didn't I just cut the 10mm off, well I hadn't done my planning quite well enough and did not have the scissors close at hand at the time! and my hands were full!!

I then screwed 45mm screws through the bulkhead at about 200mm intervals about 100mm from the edge. I had elastic bands at the ready and I had pre ripped 40mm strips of a sheet of 3mm mdf and covered them in clear packing tape (epoxy doesn't stick to it). I then wet the uni out by pouring epoxy on it and spreading it with a squeegee, by far the best method of wetting out glass in my opinion. It is fast and enables you to squeeze excess resin out as you go. Then once wet, I used the remaining resin in the pot to mix up some coving compound (glue works equally well) and I put it into a plastic zip lock lunch bag, sealed it and cut the corner off to make a piping bag. I ran a thick bead of the mix into the slot. Ideally you ought to brush some epoxy into the balsa edge too but as the balsa is not really what holds the uni in, it is the glass sides that it really adheres to I am not sure this makes all that much difference and I skipped that.

I then went back to the wet out 3.6 meter length of uni and rolled it into a rope. It is a good idea to do this last and not earlier because the tight roll could start going off faster than a laid out sheet of glass. Anyway, the rope was still cold to touch so it was not yet close to going off. I had been working fast and it was only 5 to 10 minutes since I finished wetting it out so I felt confident I had at least another 15 minutes open time. So I rolled the rope up as if it were a length of rope and took it to the doorway.

I already had the start of an mdf strip held against the doorway by an elastic band stretched from one side of the screw around the front edge to the other side. I deliberately started the uni rope down one of the long sides of the doorway about halfway down. 2 reasons for this. First it is just easier to start and finish along a straight section and leave the upside down section to near the end when most of the rope is now in the trench. Second but far more important is that the uni rope is unbroken through the entire radius of both curves. The reason for the rope is to strengthen the doorway and prevent it being a weak point where cracks or tears in a bulkhead can occur, so it stands to reason that these would be more difficult along a straigt section, that is why I chose to put the uni join along a straight.

I pulled the mdf strip away from the door edge and put the start of the uni rope under it and let the elastic bands pull it in tight again to hold it in place and started threading the uni rope into the trough onto the bed of coving already in the slot. The combination of the rope and the coving compound was a bit more than the trough wanted so it fills every cranny and then oozes out the edges. Doing about 500mm at a time I then, using one hand, the other hand holding the uni rope not yet in the trough, lined up the mdf over the edge and started stringing elastic bands over the mdf from one side to the other pulling it all down as I went. This pushed the excess cove and resin (resin oozes out of the wet rope) out of the edges wherever it is just too full to be pulled down by the mdf. A quick scrape to clean remove the glue and I repeated until I had all the rope in the slot and under the mdf. I then had 2 free hands so using a screw I poked any rope bulging out of the sides back under the mdf and then ran extra elastic bands all the way around, this time running them from one screw to the next adding even more tension to the mdf as I went and pulling it all down a little tighter.

Today, I removed the mdf and elastic bands (and the screws) from the first doorway and it came out ok. I have a few kinks in the rope here and there causing holes that will need back filling but other than that it worked really well. You need to avoid kinks in the uni as it also weakens it but the kinks I had were not too bad and I think the strength will be ok.

To finish I will sand some of the low spots to key them then back fill them to flush and while at it I will fill all of the screw holes. A reader suggested I use clamps to push the mdf down but it would be just too difficult to get the clamps on while holding the uni and mdf in place while still holding the rest of the uni in one hand all with just one pair of hands, way too hard. Once the screw holes are back filled and sanded flat we are back to good as new.

Flushed with the success of the first attempt and mindful that I have a little more working time so as to take a little more care rather than rush I set to doing the second doorway. It seemed at lot less rushed but surprisingly, it took much less time to finish the second one than it did to do the first. Yesterday it took me about an hour and a half, today I had the second one done in just over an hour.

That gave me some time rough in the robe cabinet. At this stage it is just sitting in place. I also discovered that my attempt to make the drawer after first making the front, sides and base did not work, the back simply pulled the front out again. I am quite surprised but perhaps the front had not fully set when I pulled the back down. Anyway, the solution is to cut the twisted front off and glue it back on again without the twist gluing it between the sides instead of to the edge of them and ensuring it is square and plumb. Ironically I had misjudged the depth or got my measurements wrong and the draw was too deep for the cabinet meaning I would have to cut the drawer down anyway.

Hopefully I will get a few more cool days (the forecast is for about a week of cooler weather) to finish the uni ropes at the pace I go and unflustered. I want to get them all in because the longer I go without having them dont the more chance of forgetting not to stand on them and damaging them. Once the uni is in the doorways will be as strong as they could ever be.

Nov 7 Port hull doors done, Starboard half done

The forecast cooler weather did not really eventuate, it was warmer today. Still nowhere near the 38 we had Tuesday but warmer, about 25. I had to work a little faster but no big deal. I got 3 more of the doorways uni roped. That's 5 done, all 3 in the port hull done, and 2 in the Starboard hull. I just have the toilet cubicle in the ensuite and the aft bunk cut out to do, and I have prepared for the aft bunk and will do that first up tomorrow. Actually I have a lot more to do, there is the main doorway, all of the saloon windows when I cut them, and all of the hatches and portlights will have uni rope in the edges. The deck hatches in the cockpit and foredeck and bows will need to be decored also but they can be backfilled just with filler.

I have also hit a couple of the finished ones with a grinder to clean up the edges. I am quite happy with the way they have turned out. I still have to fill some places but very few and they already have sharp square edges. The doorways will still need some trimming to accommodate the doors, and I may pre mold them or at least the rounded section but that is some time down the track.

Although I have photographed the uni rope preparation before it was no trouble to post some again in case you have forgotten or have started reading since I did the uni rope in the tops of the bulkheads. I dont even remember when I did them it was so long ago.

Tomorrow I hope to finish the uni ropes on the 2 remaining doorways in the starboard hull. There will be another doorway in each hull to do when I put the bathroom and rear bunk walls in, but I will probably put the uni into the doorway before I put the bulkhead in. I may also start to glue and glass in the robe furniture.

I also spent an hour trying to sand some of the glue, resin and bog drips off the factory floor. Unfortunately some of us (me included) have been very careless with letting bog and resin fall to the floor and then not cleaned it up. OK I am being diplomatic but the globs must be shifted from under Dennis's boat before it can be moved as the floor is no longer smooth enough for wheels to roll with a 4 ton boat on them, they would hit one of those globs and stop dead! I struggled for an hour and barely got a square meter sanded, then just before it was time for me to knock off for the day we tried heating the blobs with both a blow torch and a heat gun and both methods worked pretty well so tomorrow we will try to remove a lot more of them with those methods.

Nov 8 All doorways uni roped

The last 2 doorways, the aft bedroom opening and the ensuite toilet cubicle opening have had the uni rope applied to the decored trenches. Each one took about 1.5 hours. I also cleaned up the last of the doorways in the port hull. As with most things on the build the more you do something the better the results I seem to get, which is fairly normal. I took the mdf off the 2 doorways I had done in the port hull yesterday and I was blown away at how good a job I had done. So good that I dont have a single fill area or ripple in the glossy finish, all I have to do is sand the sides flat again for a sharp edge. I will have to sand that glass finish to key it so paint will stick to it but it will be a shame, they seriously look that good. I tried to get a photo but the camera simply could not show what the eye can see.

Sanding the edges of the doorways that have set took about half an hour to do the 4 sides of 2 doorways. Grinding with a 3 inch grinder is about the second worst job on the build (fairing is the worst). The spinning high speed disc sends talcum fine dust all over you. If its hot it sticks to your moist skin and is itchy, so the solution is to wear long sleeve shirts and pants, gloves and a breathing mask is mandatory, you must wear one, and I find my full face mask is best because it also stops dust getting in your eyes. So it is hot, miserable work, but there is no other way to do it and it has to be done. The 2 most used power tools on any build is a good battery drill and a light angle grinder with sanding discs on it.

After sending dust all over myself and the inside of the boat I decided to start cleaning up before starting on the robe furniture. I gave myself a blow down then got the vacuum cleaner and broom and pan and cleaned the the first 2 sections (ensuite and bedroom) of the port hull. There is a build up of fairing dust on everything and I have not done any cleaning up for over a month. To use the vernacular, the place is a shitfight. But it hasn't seemed worthwhile cleaning while the boys were fairing, anything I did clean would be covered in dust in just 1 day. So consequently rubbish is piling up everywhere. The solution is a big clean up, which I plan to do very soon, as soon as 9lives leaves the shed. In the meantime I will clean up the areas I am working in as I go. Today I cleaned up all of the balsa removed from the forward 2 doorways and all of the rubbish (peelply, gloves, etc) from the port hull and vacuumed the dust off the walls and floor. That took about a half hour.

Then I glued and glassed the kickboard into the wardrobe. It is the first step in building the entire cabinet. The kickboard and bottom shelf are glued and glassed to each other forming a T shape. I cannot glass where the inside of the kickboard meets the sole and hull side but I cam able to glass the front and top. This will more than secure it. I glued it, coved it and glassed it along the front and top and applied peel ply and left it to set. Next I will be able to glue and glass the rest of the cabinet to the base. The the top will glue and glass to that, but before that happens I still have to figure out the way I will set the rest of the shelves. I have not decided yet if I will have draws along the front bulkhead or shelves and cupboard doors, probably shelves and doors.

Then to finish for the day I spent another half an hour grinding resin off the factory floor. I figure if I do half an hour or so every day it wont seem like such a chore. It has become pertinent now because Denis will be wheeling his boat out of the shed soon and the way the floor is I am concerned that it might stop the wheels rolling. Of course before I can move out the floor needs to be restored so I dont lose my bond. I am just a bit annoyed that I am left to do it. Long after the party is over someone has to clean up. Also annoying is just a little prevention like putting drip sheets down would have saved a lot of this work. I understand drips and drops happen even when you put down drop sheets (cardboard, plastic, mdf) and cleaning them up when still wet is also a chore, but believe me, when they are set cleaning the up is much much harder. Rant over.

Nov 15 Robe furniture almost in

After a trip to Melbourne during the week I only got to the shed on one afternoon during the week so little got done. I didn't really get much done to show for this weekend despite putting in my usual 8 hours on Saturday and 6 hours on Sunday. What I did get done was to finish the last details of the port side walk in robe cabinets and I finished the clean up of the uni glass in the doorways in the starboard hull.

As I mentioned last week, grinding down glass and resin with a small angle grinder with a sanding disk on is about the messiest job on the build. With most power sanding tools like orbital and random orbital's you can attach a vacuum hose to extract dust and even without dust extraction the dust falls below the tool as you work, but with a grinder they spin at about 10000 rpm and they throw the dust as velocity into the air. You are guaranteed to get covered in it. So to try to mitigate this I tried wearing a hoodie with the hood on and my full face mask respirator. It worked, it kept the dust off my skin and out of my hair, but it was very hot inside those clothes.

As the furniture in the walk in robe is small I am using duflex offcuts, as I start on the larger furniture in the larger rooms I will start to use polycore. Either way though, the edges must be decored and back filled with filler. On the cabinets there are and will be a lot of 50mm rails or posts (rails horizontal, posts vertical) of varying length but all need to be decored and filled. Filling takes a day to set before it can be sanded and the piece used. It occurred to me that I am making them as I go and I am going to need them constantly so I should make a number of them so I can keep working when I get on a roll rather then continually having to wait for them to be ready. I have decided that it would also be a good idea to have decored rails waiting for filling and whenever I have left over coving filler I can fill another rail or 2.

So yesterday I did all the measuring and calculating before cutting out the panels, shelves, rails etc and back filled the them. I put them outside in the sun to harden faster and I glued and glassed the kickboard across the walk in robe and glued a couple of extra pieces to the floor to act as a base for the bottom shelf for it to bed down level. I can than glass the bottom shelf in. After that I then got stuck into the grinding of the 4 doorways. That took about an hour and a half and I stopped for lunch for half an hour and by then the panels for the furniture had been setting for about 3 hours and had set enough for me to sand the and glue and glass them in.

I glued and glassed the bottom shelf in then the middle shelf and Jo arrived to collect me. I kept her weighting for 10 minutes or so as I finished peel ply for these tapes satisfied that whilst I dawdled around a bit in the morning I still managed to get everything done that I set myself for the day.

Today I cut the rest of the rails and posts and panels for the facade and door facings and the posts that the door or doors can be hinged to. I am still not decided if I will hang to 240mm doors or a single 480mm door. If I hang 2 doors I need posts both sides if not then just on the left hand side. I glued and glassed the draw and bin cabinet in including the spacer rail that I had glued in during the week.

I gave all the tapes a sand (grinder then orbital) to remove any sharp glass splinters. I wont be bogging or fairing the inside of any of the cupboards so tapes will be visible through the white epoxy but all I want is for them to feel smooth so that I or anyone else does not reach into a cupboard and jag their finger on a sharp shard of glass. I then vacuumed al the dust out again and gave them all a coat of white epoxy.

All that is left to do now I glue and glass the facade onto the hull side and glue the post or posts in and a rail in along the top of the cabinet from one side of the hull to the other. This will also complete the platform for the top so it can also be glued in. Whilst painting the inside of the cupboards today I also gave the underside of the top a coat of white resin too. I wont be glassing the top from underneath, I will just glue, cove and glass it to the hull sides and bulkheads from above. Then all that will be left is to hang the doors and fit the drawer and bin and attach the front. The fronts and doors will all (throughout the boat) be dry fitted, then taken off the boat for storage and will be painted with the gloss paint when the outside is painted. They will probably be painted with the same paint but they could be painted a funky color like red. Unlikely but we change our minds so often who knows.

Going on how long it is taking me to do the smallest rooms in the boat I am going to be building furniture for months. But I am just getting the hang of it so I should get faster and also the larger rooms have larger furniture that wont take much longer to make but fill the room fast, so perhaps I will get a move on soon. That said, it is forecast to be 39 degrees tomorrow and that sort of temperature all week so I dont see much being done this week!

Nov 15 Robe furniture top fitting

The irony of weather! Yesterday was 35 degrees and Dennis needed a hand fitting his seagull striker. I had little intention of doing much on my boat on account of the heat. I arrived a little late and they already had the striker on, so I thought I am here, may as well get something done. The forecast was for heat all week. Today I can not get to the shed, so no work, it is about 20 degrees today! Go figure.

Anyway, I glued the front fascia rail and door hinge post into the cabinet to pretty much finish it. I just needed to sand the edges smooth (I back filled them Sunday night before knocking off) cut the rebate slot for the post and glue it all together. I also needed to glue and glass the side fascia panel on. All of this took a little over an hour (on account of the heat!).

For those that dont know, there are 2 kinds of concealed hinges for kitchen cabinet doors, inset or overlay, inset is where you hinge to the side of a cabinet and the door is framed by the cabinet sides with the top rail showing its narrow face but requires the shelf to be set back the thickness of the door and overlay is where you lay the door over the edges of the cabinet and would have fascia panels on the cabinet front the same thickness (same material) as the doors and the side edge of these fascia panels are what you hang the doors to, and with overlay, the rails are usually hung with the wide face showing as fascia panel behind the door. (There are of course 2 other options, overlaying doors without fascias, usually in conjunction with flush tops and no doors at all option by far the easiest to make, but I find both these options look less classy, just a matter of taste, or in this case, she who must be obeyed taste, but guys, without being sexist, most cupboard appearances appeal to women more than men, men generally favor function over form and in reality if you appeal to women you will have a much higher resale value.)

I favor the overlay method because generally speaking it is easier to make, especially with odd shaped sides that the hulls create although this is only in issue when making cupboards that go across the hulls, only relevant in the room I am in, all the rest will run to a square bulkhead, but I would not want to set hinges into the bulkheads anyway so would still need a post at each end so the overlay method is no more difficult in this regard. Wherever you have more than 2 doors along a cabinet a post is required mid cabinet and again the overlay method is much easier to hang doors to because you hang the door to the edge of the other door rather than to the post which with inset the face of the post shows through. The hinges give you a lot of adjustment but I also find doors easier to hang this way and when I say I favor this method, bear in mind I was an apprentice cabinet maker (making kitchens) for only 2 years over 25 years ago! So hardly an abundance of experience to draw on. I will also have top overhangs everywhere, again extra work when compared to tops that are flush with the cabinet fronts but I dont think they look as good, and finally I will opt for kickboards through out, again just a personal preference, but guided by the fact that we plan a barefoot existence and I am accident prone so this will help me avoid constantly stubbing toes.

I still have to fit the draws and the top. I will set the top next, this is usually only an hour or so work but I have dont such a poor job making this top match the opening I have large gaps I need to fill as I glue it in, and with larger gaps I fill them with duflex offcuts rather than huge glue areas, the problem with wide glue areas is they sag and are more expensive than making an offcut to fit. One thing I can say is it is level all ways. And I think it looks pretty good too. Once the top is glassed in I will give it a thin coat of bog to fair it. I have used offcuts taped to each other and I need to hide the tapes. Then all that will be needed for a while is the drawers fitted, the doors and fascia fitted then taken off again and put aside until it is time to paint them.

Nov 20 Robe top glassed on

The robe furniture is almost finished. I have glassed the top on. So apart from some bog on the top and up the walls to fair out the tapes all that will need to be done is to fit the drawer runners and hinges so that the drawers open and close correctly and then to make and fit the doors and drawer fronts. I will make all of the doors and drawer fronts for the entire boat at the same time, dry fit them, remove them again for painting then final fit just before launch.

There is of course other work that needs to be done in the room, such as fit the final d section wall and glass it on and to fit and glass the hull to deck panel then either fair the room or make linings. I will probably roughly fair the room and paint white epoxy everywhere except on the top and cupboard fronts. 

Now that the furniture is all in it is part of the structure of the boat (actually I still have one more web to fit to the roof for the mast post load dispersion) and the furniture acts to stiffen the hull and to dissipate some of the mast post loads. So on to the next rooms, the forward bedrooms. I still have to fit the ensuite furniture, it is made but the edges need filling and some plumbing finalized for which I am waiting to buy the first of the toilets which I will do in Dec then I can say I am finished both forward rooms. I am working from the bows back but where I have to I will skip back and forth to keep working.

Nov 22 Bedroom furniture set out

The next rooms back are the forward berths in each hull and across the bridgedeck. Each bedroom will have a slightly different set up in that the port berth will run across the boat (athwartships) and the starboard berth will run fore and aft. This will mean the step set up will be different and consequently the cupboards around them. But the outside hull side cupboards will be the same.

Bothe rooms have the doors in the same place but mirror image and both will have the mast posts in the same place. The furniture down the outside wall then will also be identical. The great thing about this is that when I figure out one I have also figured the other and just have to cut the same parts in mirror image which should speed things along a little.

The first issue is the forward doorway is now moved off the centerline of the hull and the cupboard must accommodate that and act as a path from one door to the other. I have worked out that the kickboard still fits perfectly when maintaining a line parallel to the centerline. It starts at exactly the point or distance from the centre I want so that the doors overhang the kicker when fitted plumb and the top overhangs the doors by the correct amount and is set back from the door edge the appropriate distance and then when run in a straight line down the hull  maintaining parallel to center it ends up the exact distance from the edge of the doorway (the door that is moved outboard). Of course it tapers as the hulls taper but the leading edge is straight and the taper is against the hull side. So that pretty much set itself.

I ran a string line at the top height from bulkhead to bulkhead at the inside edge of the doorways. This gave me an outline of the top shape but as the forward door is no longer on the centerline this string line did not mirror the kickboard below, that is, it did not run parallel to centerline. It also resulted in a top and cupboard shape that resulted in very shallow shelves from the center forward. I could not run the top parallel to centerline or else it would jut into the doorway, so then I experimented with the string line to set a new top shape that both allowed me to follow the kickboard and to meet the forward door and act as a correct walkway to it. I settled on the shape in the string line by measuring 3 doors on the cupboard of 500mm wide each and maintained parallel to that point then ran the string line into the doorway from there.

This still leaves me with a problem of the front face of the cupboard and the angles and problems of narrowing hulls etc that this creates, so I will solve this by not having a front on the cupboard at that forward angled section. It will be open shelves, the shape of which I have not yet settled on. The kicker is pre set as I can maintain the plumb line but the hull narrowing means that directly above the kicker front edge is into the door opening so the top cannot mirror the kicker from the point it turns in and neither can the shelves, how ever many I decide to fit. They must be either angled in to the correct width or curved in. I will work on that later by experimenting with shelf shapes. Being open greatly simplifies it though and offers a number of possibilities.

So the cupboard ends about 450mm from the doorway. I then also decided that instead of posts to hang the 3 doors on I would separate each cupboard behind each door with a wall, the reasoning that if during a rough passage the contents inside move there are 3 small spaces in which for them to move instead of 1 large space. It also allows me to have different numbers of shelves in each space. I will probably have a single shelf in 2 of them but 2 shelves in the middle one. And having solid walls also gives the structure more strength and rigidity. A front rail will still join the tops and lay a platform for the top.

The great thing about mirror image cupboards is that you can cut both sides at the same time saving a lot of time. I had already cut both kickboards and glued and glassed the kicker to the cupboard bottom shelf (and pre decored the front edge and back filled them yesterday). So using the string line I was able to measure the wall size and shape (measure from the string line to the hull and the front kicker edge to the hull remembering there is a chine in the there also). Of course I started with a cardboard cut out based on my measurements and once convinced that it fit I transcribed those measurements onto a polycore panel and I cut out the 6 cupboard walls.

To finish off today I decored the side walls and a front rail and back filled them. I have a slightly different de core method for the polycore. I still run the router cut against the inside glass edges as I do with balsa (the front rail is balsa) but to remove the poly honeycomb core I find it easier to use the die grinder with a conical bit in it. It is even faster than decoring balsa, but just as messy! I filled them and knocked off early.

Yesterday it was hot. Today it was damn hot. It was 34 yesterday, 41 today. The hottest November day in Sydney since they started taking records 75 years ago. Nah, no global warming going on here chaps, just keep arguing against doing anything to combat it, cos I am not convinced!

Nov 24 Bedroom furniture dividers glassed in

The Port bedroom hull side cupboard kickboard was glassed in last night and tonight I glassed the 3 dividing walls and front rail into the hull. I also glued a post against the bulkhead on the aft end of the cupboard. I clamped blocks of timber, duflex whatever I could lay my hands on, to act as braces to hold the upright walls in place until they set overnight. I am resisting using screws into the hull sides hence the bracing.

The dividing walls are level, square and plumb. Next I will make shelves and fit them. Jo wants at least 1 drawer, so I may put that into the centre section and a smaller door under it with just 1 shelf in that section and 2 shelves in the 2 end compartments.

I also still have to shape the angled in section at the fore of this furniture as it angles in to the doorway that is now moved toward the hull side. I will experiment with curves and straight angles to see what works best.

Nov 27 Bedroom furniture shelves

The port bedroom furniture continues to take shape an hour at a time. It has been hot again all week so by the time I am able to get to the shed it is sauna like. An hour at a time is about as much as I can stand of it.

I have all the shelves and a rail cut and dry fitted. The rail is because the top of the middle section will be a drawer, the rest shelves at varying heights to increase the versatility of the shallow unit.

Over the weekend I will glass the shelves in, shape the top and glass that down and give the internals a coat of white epoxy to finish the unit ready for doors to be hung as some point later in the build when I make and fit all the cupboard doors in one go.

With Nine Lives about to be launched there are a lot of unfinished projects on it that I would rather see done before it goes into the water and the builders are not going to get them done in time so I volunteered to get them done. Little things like attaching the chain plates, there is a bulkhead in the boat that has not been glassed in properly, the windlass is not installed etc. And then there is the shed preparation so that the move out runs smoothly.  This and the stifling summer heat put a stop to work on my boat. I was at the shed for 14 hours over the weekend and only managed 2 hours on my build so I ended up on 60 hours for the month instead of 70 or more.