Well, I’ve been working on my boat some, just not posting here very much. Thought I’d give you all a before & after update.
When I last left you, I had just completed some creative destruction.
Which resulted in the boat looking something like this.
The next step was to smooth things out across the top of the bulkheads. Recall that the point of all this was to give me a smooth, level surface on which to put new stanchions and the last of the planking. So, how to sand smooth that curved surface of the deck? I came up with this idea.
Since the bulkheads were provided to me laser-cut, I still had the leftover frame from around the bulkheads (See! It’s important not to throw anything away!)
I figured that I could use those already pre-curved pieces of wood to make a sanding block. So I cut them all out. Stacked and glued them together.
And then glued a piece of sandpaper to the curved surface and voilà! A perfectly curved sanding block!
The next step was to start re-attaching the waterway. These are the deck planks that run between (cough, cough) the stanchions and for a couple of rows inboard. These are typically thicker than the regular deck planking. So, this is what I ended up with.
Another feature I implemented when installing the waterway was to color the edges of the wood with pencil. Why would I do this you ask? Well, on a normal boat, there would be caulk between the deck planks that is normally a darker color than the decking. I read online that an easy way of achieving this look is to color one edge of each plank with a pencil. Then, when sanded and finished, thin dark lines will show up between the edges of the decking and look like caulk!
That’s it for this update. Next up, trenailing! (I’ve said that before!)
Jim