2010 building logs

November 2010 Galley and Bathroom

The starboard hull furniture construction is almost complete. I say almost because although nearly all of it is made, there are many parts made but not glassed in yet and many part finished jobs that have small jobs needed to finish it all off. All waiting for one task or another, in most cases wiring or plumbing to go in before finally finishing that part of the build in. Of course final "finishing" wont take place until all construction is finished and final finishing includes linings ro laminates or in some cases fairing and painting and doors hinged and and latches or knobs fitted. In many cases I am not going to use expensive marine latches, and will just use rare earth magnets to keep the doors shut, and standard household knobs and handles but stainless, aluminium or plastic (we haven't chosen them yet). So the next major furniture to be built is the galley cabinets which like the nav cabinet does on the starboard side, the kitchen

Nov 6 Finishing the Nav cabinet

I had made a start on the final section of the unfinished navigation cabinet located in front of the helm inside the saloon, it will also house the entertainment and all electronics on board. One decision we have not made yet is if we will use the plotter screen as our tv/dvd screen. At 15" it is huge for a plotter but not quite big enough for tv or dvd inside the boat. It can swing out and be perfectly acceptable for when we might want to watch a dvd sitting in the cockpit but as our regular screen for normal tv it seems a little small. There is no reason it cannot be stowed when at anchor (which lets face it, is 90% of the time) and we will have a 19" tv on board and if we want, because the plotter has a video out, we can even use the 19" tv screen as the plotter screen whilst it stays stowed under the hinged bench top.

 

Anyway, the cupboard size was already set by the bottom and middle shelves and kickboard being in place having been installed a few months back . All that was left was to complete the wrap around side and to make the top, which has the plotter box incorporated into it.  I had made a start on the box where last month left off. The box is really just a ply base with 2 duflex sides, the back of the box is made up by the bulkhead and the front of the box is a rail that forms the front rail of the cabinet, to which the tops of the doors will be latched (magnets to hold them shut) and maybe a lock (it might be a good idea to have this cabinet secured). With the box size decided and the rail and exposed edges back filled I could glass the box in. The curved cupboard side has been glassed in (the side was made in 2 parts the curved part and the flat side but only the curved section was glassed in at this stage). I glassed the plotter box to the front rail first off the boat so that the entire part, front rail and box could go in as one. So having dont that the night before so it was set, it was a fairly easy task to line it all up level and plumb before glassing it into the cabinet to set.

Then with the plotter box and front rail in, all that is left to finish this cabinet is to fit a small panel to the side of the cabinet at the doorway and the tops. The panel is already cut to size and has been screwed to the side of cabinet for some time. It must be glassed in before the top goes on, I already have to crawl deep into the cupboard to glass the inside under the middle shelf and there is no point doing that above the top shelf when I can leisurely reach it from above with the top off. But in the meantime, the top is being glued together from the out taken panel from the window at the helm. Nothing gets wasted if it can be helped, especially off-cuts as large as the window cut outs. Duflex is expensive stuff so where I can I join smaller bits to make larger ones I can use and of course if the part needed is smaller than an offcut I simply cut it out of the offcut. The window cutout has a curved piece that needs to be glued into it where the steering riser was situated into the window space. There is also a shortfall in the front corner that also needs a piece glued in to completely cover the space required. In order to strengthen the joins I have used a tongue and groove method (sometimes called biscuit method) by cutting a deep groove in the balsa with the die grinder on each side of the joins (into each piece being joined) and a tongue made from a strip of pine timber. I will still glass the join on the underside of the top but wont on the topside as this will be laminated and will be plenty strong with just the laminate and saves fairing out the tapes. (both sides of the join on the underside of the top still get glassed to the cabinet sides which effectively also holds all the parts to the cupboard so the join cannot open anyway. Also, because the top will have a hinged middle section that will have hinges screwed into it and because balsa is a very soft timber and does not hold well, I have glued a pine strip into the edge of the top that will house the hinges.

The tops (there are 3 sections of the nav cabinet top 1 of which is a lid to the plotter box) once cut to size and the pieces that make up the larger part glued together, the edges that will be exposed are de-cored and back filled. Once set the top is refitted to check before sanding the edges down square and smooth. Then the tops were glued and glassed onto the cabinet. Getting into the cabinet to get the underside of the top glassed to the bulkhead and cabinet sides was hard work. I usually wear a mask when doing big glassing jobs, I dont bother for smaller jobs but this is a job I would usually wear it for but cant because I can barely get my head and shoulders into the cabinet deep enough to reach the areas I need to tape and with the face mask on there is no way. But being in a confined space on a hot day coving with freshly mixed compound and then applying a wet tape means breathing fumes at very close range is unavoidable. It was hot and the combination of the confined space, the heat, sweat dripping into my eyes and being on my back and squeezing into the cabinet was extremely uncomfortable and exhausting. 4 days on and I can still feel the bruises this caused and my back hurts so I am paying a price for that nav cabinet. But just admiring my work afterwards and now makes me feel it was very much worth it.

I still have to make the lid for the plotter box and that is pretty much it for now on the nav cabinet. The doors are part of the final finish and fit so wont be done anywhere on the boat until near the end, so I dont count that as not finished for now. Next job is to move onto the galley cabinets.

Nov 15 Galley cabinets

The galley is an area I have thought about for a long time. It was always understood by me that the galley and main bathroom would be one of the last sections of furniture construction and we (Jo and I) went through a number of options about how and where we would have the galley but one thing was known from the start, we were always going to have our galley up on the bridgedeck. We cant imagine having the galley in one of the hulls, we know many people prefer that but not for us. We only ever want to go into the hulls for the bathroom or the bedroom. And having built the rest of the bridgedeck cabinets the time has come to start on the galley which forms part of the bedroom (the back wall of the kitchen cabinets form the side wall of the bathroom).

We saw many galleys we liked over the years, we really liked what Tasman had been able to achieve on their 35 foot design. We also particularly liked what we saw on the 48ft Alaskan powerboat. The key feature of that galley is the floor to ceiling pantry next to the sliding door that joins the cockpit to the saloon. Also a feature on the Alaskan is the kitchen bench-top faces out of the aft window and wraps around over the hull to form the roof of the bathroom and the back wall of the cabinet forming the side wall of the bathroom. We have adopted pretty much all of this in our design albeit adapted to our size boat given that we are 8ft shorter and have a slightly narrower beam which both impact on the space available between bulkheads and across the bridgedeck. But there is not much we have not adopted even down to the position of the fridge, not that there are many places we could have put it. About the only real difference is the shape of the saloon seating and even then only minor differences. I can only hope I get the kind of finish Rob from Schionning managed to achieve.

So to the set out, we already pretty much knew where the various cabinets would go so it was just a matter of measuring and cutting before rough in. It must be more than a year since I closed in the doorway from 1200mm to 900mm to accommodate the stand up pantry. This was a consideration when I set out and constructed the cockpit seating all those months ago. The this leaves a space 450mm wide between the edge of the doorway and the edge of the kitchen window space which govern the maximum width that the pantry cabinet can be. I then set each wall of this cabinet back 20mm from each edge leaving me a maximum 410mm external width and given I am using 20mm panels, that affords me 370mm internal width. 

Measuring from roof to floor is an easy enough task, as is setting the depth of the cabinet. In home kitchens there is an industry standard of 600mm from front to back (and a standard height of 900mm). And of course I already have a set kickboard height on the nav cabinet of 120mm (I was going to have a 50mm false floor leaving a 70mm kickboard but that idea has been scrapped so we will now have a 120mm kickboard. But for some reason (I dont remember why, I think it was either to get maximum use of existing materials or just a mistake) the bench top on the nav cabinet is only 580mm deep. And whilst I am a big fan of symmetry I thought I would try and crib some of that missing space back figuring we may not miss the space on the nav cabinet but it may be critical on the kitchen bench tops. So I cut the pantry side at 590mm deep cribbing back 10mm and not being too far different as to be visibly obvious between the 2. And I cut the kickboard to length and height. I marked it out for kerfing and cut the kerfs by hand saw. Usually I would use an electric saw but on polycore I find the circular saw rips the glass from panel in fact it pulls the scrim away too. Especially on tight kerfs. This took all of 5 minutes by hand. Then a notch in the front of the pantry side to accommodate the kickboard and I am ready to dry fit. As usual I cut the panel a little oversize then trimmed it down with the grinder until it was a snug fit.

Next step was to decore the front edge of the pantry side and back fill it and glass the kerfed rounded corner to hold its shape. I also cut the 2 shelved that will go into the cabinet next to the pantry and run along the bulkhead. As I did on the nav cabinet I will make part of the bottom shelf removable to make use of the 120mm of space behind the kickboard. Anyway another little mistake today meant that my desire for symmetry was fulfilled in the galley cupboards. As I said, I tried to crib a little size back without it looking odd by making the pantry wall 10mm bigger at 590mm than the depth of the nav cabinet top at 580mm. As usual I slightly overfill the edge and then sand it back, it avoids having air bubbles or other issues with the edges. When I started sanding I had a hollow in the middle of the 2100mm edge so I started to even it out with a long board. And just like Jerry in the Seinfeld episode where he just wanted to even out his chest hair and before he knew it he has shaved it all off, well I had sanded off 8mm of my extra 10mm and most of the filled edge. It was a huge curve. In places I broke through the filler and ended up with core again, to which I will just have to re-fill. No biggie, I have symmetry again and I have refilled the edges. The edges will end up being laminated anyway so I dont even really need to refill the holes but I do just to be thorough.

Summer is well and truly upon us. It must have been 40 degrees on the boat yesterday. I really had to hustle too because the heat was causing the coving to set before I could get the tapes on. And of course I had to wet out as I went along rather than wetting all the tape out at the start like I would have done just 6 weeks ago. And when I am hot and bothered and rushed it is likely that I will be sloppy or make a mistake. Fortunately that didn't happen and the tapes were all well adhered and nicely peel plied, not that it matters all that much as most will be hidden inside the cupboards but it was nice to know that my work was not terrible because of the conditions. I knocked off at 3pm and went swimming. I just couldn't do any more. And the saltwater is a great way to lose the itchiness.

Nov 25 More work on galley cabinets

I was given an idea by a friend that makes campervans on an alternative method of making a curved corner panel for the galley cabinets, especially the floor to ceiling pantry unit. The longer a curved panel is the harder it is to curve it and maintain a fair curve. So instead of kerfing a rigid panel or cold molding an unglassed panel, both methods I have employed so far in the galley, and found kerfing is a bit better for achieving a fair finish, another method is to use a drain pipe cut into quarters. The walls on the larger pipes are close to 8mm thick so the panel is rigid and the only issue is attaching the pipe to the panel edge. PVC when keyed (roughed up by sanding or grinding) can be glassed, and furniture panels, especially cosmetic door and wall panels dont require the same level of strength that structural furniture walls do so I have no doubt that glassing to pvc pipe each side would be strong enough.

My first experiment with the quarter pipe was the bathroom side wall and ceiling which separates the galley from the bathroom providing a back to the galley cabinets. I have a depth issue in that I am again compromising between the cabinets intruding into the walkway space and where the bathroom wall will be (straight up from the chamfer to bridgedeck join) that forms the back of the cabinet. In order to get some depth into that cabinet which will be a set of drawers I am firstly constrained by the position of the back wall. Then whatever the depth I decide I need then dictates how far the cupboard protrudes into the walkway. Set where I would like them to be I get about 350mm of cupboard depth. Ideally I need at least 400mm. I want the top drawer to be a cutlery draw and usually a plastic cutlery divider is a minimum 400mm, you get a plastic edge all around of around 80mm to cut to the actual size of the inside draw dimensions but the minimum is usually about 400mm across the actual cutlery divisions. So one way to get a little more depth into that top drawer was to curve the corner. I had the idea to have a curved corner for some time because the other wall (the hull side to deck) is already curved so I have had a matching curve marked on the bathroom side of the stair wall and the main bulkhead (between bathroom and shower) for a while. The pvc pipe curve is an easier way of getting my curve in, it is a smaller radius but not by much and will work out fine.

I cut the length of drain pipe I had to the length I needed to span the distance from the bathroom stairwell wall to the bulkhead (1200mm) and then cut it into quarters giving me 4 ninety degree curves. I only need one at this length but will need 2 at 740mm for the stairwell to cabinet curves and still have enough length to also cut a kickboard piece for each corner (140mm). I then keyed the surface of the 1200mm length preparing it for glassing to the pieces of 9mm ply I will use as the side and top of the panel. The panel is inside the cupboard from the bridgedeck side and will have a lining over it on the bathroom side and the top section will end up with another top, the bench top over it  in the galley so being 9mm ply is not an issue. I also have 13mm ply but that I felt was just too heavy and not required. 9mm ply is a touch heavier than polycore but not by much and over the area involved (800mm high x 1200mm wide) we might be talking about a few hundred grams heavier and I still have plenty of ply left (about 5 sheets) but I have run out of polycore for now so the budget is also dictating some of the decisions. I will need about another 4 panels of polycore which means I will have used 20 panels of varying thickness in total in the construction of the furniture. Considering each panel has cost me about $150 in polycore panel, resin and glass, that is about half what ATL or other companies charge for pre glassed panels, and at $3000 for my entire furniture build about 1/5 the cost of buying a pre-cut furniture kit from Schionning (the price was about $15k when I first bought my kit, maybe a touch more now). I dont say that to suggest a pre-cut furniture kit is not worth the money but if you intend on free styling your layout you are much better off either buying the panels pre-glassed or like me, glassing them yourself.

Measuring and cutting ply to size is quite easy and once I had the 2 pieces I glassed the pvc quarter pipe to the larger of the 2 ply panels, the bathroom side wall/cabinet back wall. I screwed tha panel to a bench over a sheet of plastic to stop it sticking to the table. I then made some curved wedges to mount the curved quarter pipe in so that it held at the correct angle and tightly in place edge to edge and glassed it. Once set I glassed the other side. With glass tapes on both sides the join is very solid. I then did the same again only this time I just set the wall side on blocks so that its height was exactly right to butt join the other pipe edge to the other panel also at the correct angle and again on plastic sheet with screws in the panel to stop it moving as it set. Again one side at a time and once both sides were set I had a single corner panel with curved corner that will go into the space to seal off the bathroom from the upper bridgedeck and the galley cabinets there. I will glass it into the boat on the weekend.

I have not quite figured how I will attach the curved quarter pipe to the already in place vertical stairwell panel and the cabinet fronts. I think I will almost certainly attach the curved pvc to the cabinet front first as this can be done off the boat on a bench. It is quite easy making horizontal panels to join straight but a bit harder to do vertically in panels already in place on the boat. I have to make these joins as clean possible as they need to be fair so that it is invisible once laminated, in other words no bumps and a straight edge.

Another loose end still needing to be finished is the cupboard between the back of the starboard daggerboard case and the bedroom wall, actually this area in both hulls needs to be finished, but I have had the parts made and sitting in place on the starboard side for some time, now it is time to finish it by glassing it all in. I have been procrastinating about whether or not I need the cupboard space in that area because putting a door in is much more work than just glassing the panel in, and the space below what would be the middle shelf is next to useless anyway so any door would only be from half way then up to the top so only about 350mm high by about 250mm deep by the 1 meter or so wide, its not a huge lot of space we are not getting to utilize and does not seem worth the effort. So I curved the kickboard panel and glassed it to the bottom shelf off the boat and will then glass the bottom shelf into the boat with the kickboard attached. Then I will glass the front on and then the top and leave the space inside as buoyancy.

I will also get started on finishing the saloon seat return opposite the pantry to finish the walkway from the main doors to the galley and the pathway into the port hull next. I am aiming to have the galley finished by Christmas leaving just loose ends and the bathroom/shower/laundry to do to finish the furniture. By loose ends there are a number of cabinets started such as the ensuite, all the parts made but not yet glassed in or still a part to be made such as the port bed side cupboards and various other bits and pieces so that I can get stuck into the rear steps to finish the outside construction, before embarking on the final phase of the build, the final fit and finishing.