Reaching a milestone

A major part of the plan for Ms. Bettencourt's top was accomplished today. We finished building the framework on the boat.

A few days of nice weather over Christmas provided the window needed to shape and install the rafters that will support the hard top. Jim cut these cross pieces from 2 x 6 fir boards on the bandsaw, then shaped them to fit. Each one was different:

This work came together with satisfying speed. The following photo shows the five rafters mated to the boat and to the longitudinal stringers we finished last week.

The rafters were fastened to the fiberglass structure of the boat with thickened epoxy and stainless steel screws. Note the notches (kerfs) in the rafter just aft of the windshield. These relief cuts allowed us to bend the rafter forward to match the curve on the Albin cabin top. Looking aft to the last cross member, please notice the mounting blocks in the back corners. These will receive the rail assembly that will hold the framework up.

I moved that H-shaped rail assembly into place yesterday. Some adjustment is needed, but the rail stanchions took up the weight of the framework in a very solid fashion.  I stood on the cabintop and tried to push the whole structure from side to side. It wouldn't move. This is good.

The quality of Jim's framework joinery is a major contributor to this stability. This  closeup shows how the aft cross member meets a stringer:














The last two days have been devoted to carefully shaping the rafter arches to assure they are all the same height, both side-to-side and front-to-back. Jim got really intent about this important work. He used a straight-edged 10-foot 2x4 as a guide.

Dia made a cameo appearance near the day's end to contribute some perfecting adjustments.

And here's the finished structure:

The next step is to make patterns from the framework on the boat to guide the shape and final dimensions of the plywood top.  After that, the work will move inside to begin building, shaping and fiberglassing Ms. Bettencourt's new top.



Details, details, details ....

Yesterday was for dealing with details. I drove across town to get a handful of 316 grade stainless steel screws. You can buy “stainless” fasteners at the local home center. But it turns out these are inferior. They are not marine grade and will eventually rust. This is an important detail.

The screws I got from the marine store will be used to attach rail fittings to the top of the aft cabin and to the bottom, aft end, of the hard top frame. Eventually, these fittings will receive a 1-inch rail tubing structure that will hold up the back of the hard top.

Placing the aft cabin top fittings revealed a more challenging detail: The cabin top is curved, while the rail fittings' mounting surfaces are flat. It will be necessary to make some wedges so the rail fittings can mount in a horizontal orientation.
  

That little detail consumed the remainder of the day’s work. I made two wedge-shaped fairing blocks out of ¾” vinyl trim plank material. These were shaped with a belt sander, then stuck to the cabin top with thickened epoxy. Another important detail: It’s a good idea to grind the paint off the areas where the fairing blocks are to be placed, so that the epoxy adhesive can make a good bond to the fiberglass substrate.

Here you can see the fairing blocks in place, bedded in thickened epoxy. The filleted joints around the blocks will be sanded and painted. You can see how aggressively I sanded the areas upon which the fairing blocks are placed. The screws through the blocks will be removed after the adhesive cures.

And here's how the block on the starboard side looks, with a rail fitting sitting on top to show how the rail base will be formed:

For those interested in technical details, the resin I used yesterday was West System 105, catalyzed with West System 206 slow hardener. After giving this mixture about a 90-second stirring, I blended in wood flour until the mix reached the consistency of thick peanut butter. This pot of adhesive gave me more than 30 minutes working time at about 70F.

From the Lessons Learned Department: Should your cellphone ring while you are working with epoxy resin, do not answer. I answered mine yesterday, only to discover several hours later that the phone had picked up a glob of resin and would not flip open. Fixing this was tedious work.

My friend Major is coming over today to help cut and fit railing for the support structure. We hope to to assemble the support framework and do a trial fitting on the boat today.

Old Stuff

Jim and I worked on the hard top framework yesterday, until a shower blew through and drove us away. I shot some pictures, but I didn't capture a pleasing image from our day’s product: Piles of wood chips and plane shavings on a patina of rain-spattered sawdust.

The plane shavings did start me thinking, however, about old stuff. My plane is very old. It belonged to my Dad, who would have been 104 on the 13^th of this month. I think that plane was old when he got it.

I removed some grab rails from the boat’s aft cabin top. They too are old—no doubt original equipment on this 40-year-old Albin pocket trawler. All the rails looked really bad-old when I got the boat. Peek over the stern and you’ll see our teak swim platform. In its previous life, it was on the stern of a classic 1950-something Matthews cruiser. A neighbor gave it to me. I cut it down to fit the Albin transom.

On the other end of Ms. Bettencourt is an anchor platform that I found in a Charleston junk shop. I think it came off a sailboat. It looked old then and still does now. The big stainless steel king post came, with just a few chain dents, from a salvage operation in Oriental, NC. Just aft of the anchor platform is a spring-top stainless hawse fitting, rescued from a barrel of old stuff found in Daytona Beach, FL. In a compartment under the hawse pipe is a 13-pound Danforth High Tensile anchor that came with a 1967 houseboat I owned in 1975.

I could drop down the hatch into the V-berth area and start a list of other old stuff down there. But you probably have a mental picture by now, of how old Ms. Bettencourt has been modernized, since her derelict days, with perfectly serviceable old stuff. I think new stuff would look funny on this boat.

We will need some long grab rails for Ms Bettencourt’s new top. Next month, its back to Oriental to pick up a pair of really ratty looking teak 10-footers I saw in a shop there last September. They looked o-l-d. They will look great on Ms. Bettencourt.

Meanwhile, when the rain abates, Jim and I will be making three more cross members for the new top structure. I will post some photos when we get that done.

Beginning the framework

Today was a dreary and windy, but dry and not too cold day on the Savannah River.  Jim, my friend, yoga instructor and project expert carpenter arrived about noon and we got a good 4 hours work in before the light failed. We had spent a few hours Friday making a pattern for the aft cross member and mocking up joints in cheap southern yellow pine. That was time well spent.

At the start, the work looked kind of strange with just two fir 2x4s, a lot of clamps and temporary props:

At this point, we made many eyeball-type adjustments, seeking to visually connect the rearward slope of the hard top frame with the overall geometry of the boat.  After we got something that looked pleasing from the other side of the dock, Jim spent considerable time measuring and re-measuring to make sure dimensions were consistent from side to side, in and out, and up and down.

It's not obvious, but where the boat sits at our dock is only about 50 feet up a ramp and across a patio to my workshop. I thought a long time about whether this work would be easier done on the trailer under a shed at my boat storage place. In the end, the decison was made to stay in the water, near the shop and its tools. I think this was a good move. While we were subjected to a fair amount of ski boat wakes during the day, that annoyance was more than offset by not having to work with the boat high on the trailer. And, there's also the matter of all the travel time I would have wasted going back and forth to the shop for forgotten tools.

So, today, with a bandsaw in my nearby shop, it was not much of a chore to use Friday's pattern to shape the aft cross member, then tack it up to check the fit:

This cross member will be mortised into the longitudinal 2x4 stringers next week if the weather remains agreeable.

Probably the next step after that will be to build attachment pads for the 1-inch stainless steel tubular rail stanchions that will hold up the back of the structure. At this point, we will start glueing up the joints with thickened epoxy, and all those temporary clamps will go away. The glueing will be a temperature-critical operation, because the epoxy glue won't cure satisfactorily in temperatures below 60F.

Meanwhile, this looked like a good place for us to stop today:

Finally, I would be most grateful if you would let me know how you like the way this chronicle is unfolding. Too much detail? Not enough? Unanswered questions? Other issues?

I am new to Blogging, so there is much for me to learn. I would like to provide something useful and interesting here. If you have ideas about how I can make it better, please let me know.

One wet cruise too many!

The Ms. Bettencourt is a 25-foot Albin trawler, built in Sweden in 1972. She is Hull No. 1117 of about 2500 produced. The boat came to me in 2003 as a gift. Before the boat reached my dock on the Savannah River at Augusta, GA, it had been abandoned for about 12 years.

Since 2003, I have restored the vessel, adding new canvas, a teak anchor platform, a teak swim deck, dinghy mounts and numerous interior amenities. I have cruised the boat about 4,000 nautical miles, mostly on the east coast of the US, from Cape Lookout, NC, to the Florida Keys.

The decision to build a hardtop came last month, after at least a couple of years of study and more than a few wet cruises. Hard rains penetrate the canvas top.

The new hard top is to be made from 3/8” Marine plywood, epoxy resin and fiberglass cloth. The project is inspired by the top on Hira Reid’s A-25 "Shatoosh". Hira helped immeasurably by happily supplying numerous photos, builder specifications, measurements and drawings from her Albin.

My wife, whose maiden name is Bettencourt, and I established a budget of $2,500. By last week about half had been expended on orders for marine plywood, lumber, resin, fabric, tools and related stuff.

Job #1 was to clean out half of our garage and build an 8x12’ table. The table will be used as the surface on which the marine plywood sheets will be joined and shaped. Once the plywood is ready, I plan to build a strongback structure on the tabletop. The strongback will be used to shape the plywood top’s curvature and as a fixture to hold that shape while ribs are glassed in place and fabric and paint are applied.

The general strategy has two major parts: Build a permanent base structure on the Ms. Bettencourt to which the top will be attached; then build the hardtop in the garage. The two will be joined at some future date.

Meanwhile, we have built the table:

And we have made a start on building a structure on the boat to receive the top once it is made:

This band around the cabin top, which has not yet been completely shaped, is made of a PVC 1x4 lumber product that Lowes calls "trim plank." It is stuck in place with thickened epoxy and secured with stainless steel screws.

That's where the project stands today. If our Georgia weather holds dry and relatively warm, I will likely have more to report after this weekend.