Companionway and Grab Rails

I made a lot of sawdust today.  Most of my millwork gets done in the backyard where I've converted a 6-foot party table into my main workbench.  My wife let me borrow this because there aren't any parties during these "special times" unless you count the wildlife which occasionally stops by to criticize my work.

Some work gets done in the driveway, too.  In fact, most of the table saw work gets done there in full view of the neighbors.  They already think I'm crazy from the days I was studying Arabic for fun so the image of a ~16' boat and its perky bowsprit doesn't faze them at all.  I try to keep a low profile but it's nearly impossible the way this boat has taken over my life lately.

Between bouts of sanding (which are visible in some of the photos below where the starboard side got some sanding love) I finally got around to working on the companionway.  This begins with a few 1" x 1/2" strings of lumber serving as the "sill" which the manual states will keep the cabin dry.  Makes sense.  One nice thing about this is most of it will be buried in the slide and then the hood so I didn't necessarily need to be perfect here, just neat enough.  More importantly, it needed to be watertight and flush with the entrance to the cabin.

 

This work was easier done while standing in the cabin, but I'd pulled the liftouts long ago so I was unnecessarily straddling the bilge and cleats.  I popped out of the boat, found the liftouts, and re-installed them.  Wow, they look great!  I then tossed some newspaper down to catch any epoxy drips.  That was the most use I've gotten out of a newspaper since I ran out of toilet paper on that road trip.

A dry fit of the milled pieces went well, but an interesting thing to mention in this photo is that the top (forward) strip and the left (port) one were milled before I set all this aside.  I found them a couple weeks ago but didn't know what they were for until I made the starboard strip.  This is why in the photo starboard is so much longer because I thought I was making two.  It turns out the one I made ~6 years ago was in good shape and a better angle so I kept it.  I then kept the better half of the new strip and now have all three pieces to form the sill.

A few weeks ago, I noted that the companionway opening sitting on the tire caused a bit of an inward bulge.  It's a half inch or so but noticeable.  With the forward sill in place with a clamp, the curve is once again true.  I'm not sure if it'll hold but stranger things have happened.

Three pumps of epoxy and some wood flour later, this is now curing with all of the clamps I could find in the house.  I had easily 4-5 times this many but they're all in storage.  Hopefully I won't need them in the next couple weeks.

 

Working backwards like Benjamin Button, I made the bigger companionway bits earlier in the afternoon, but this was not without drama.  In short, I have no idea where the patterns are for these bits.  I lost them in the move or thought they were scrap or thought they might burn well in my fire pit.  I posted on the forums and someone suggested I write CLC.  I thought about that but I felt like I was such a pain to them about the sailing hardware I didn't want to bother them.  After awhile, though, if I wanted to make progress, I had no choice but to reach out.

Within a day, John himself wrote me with a personalized, full size PDF for my missing pieces.  Wow!  Thanks, CLC.  I took it down to a print shop and a couple hours later was happily cutting out the patterns for my hood and slide.

 

I made the hood sides awhile back so they just needed some cleaning up with a little sanding jig before getting grooves with the table saw.

The forward facing bit of padauk has a fault in it.  I debated whether or not to show this or hide it.  In the end, I decided to show it; the hood sides and forward will stay bright.  It'll scream "real wood" and give the boat some character.  As I type that, it reminds me of a friend's grandmother who used to put little bits of shell in her crabcakes to prove they were made with real crab.  Some years from now when I've successfully sued her for half his inheritance I'll remind him that yes, Gramma made real crabcakes.

The slide itself is a simple bit of woodworking (especially with patterns -- thanks, CLC!).  The top piece is sanded down to its normal finish whereas the purple one is the darkened one.  Padauk is a reddish-brown in epoxy but more purple when exposed to air.

 

I'm also out of padauk or even pine that fit the specs so I used marine plywood for the aft and forward sides of the slide.  It'll still look good.

 

And then I decided to take a leap and try to make handrails.  The toerails on most PocketShips are minimalist, functional bits of timber that run along the outside edge of the cabin decking.  I think this would look good as padauk trim, but would look even better as grab rails.

I first scored the curve against a scrap bit of pine and transferred that to my last decent-sized bit of padauk.  A quick run with the jigsaw and I had two mirror strips of padauk.  These would be the tops.

After some discussion with myself, I decided that five, four-inch "feet" per rail would be functional and look good.  That meant cutting a third matching rail to create the 10 "feet' for the two rails.

 

A dry fit is promising.  This design has the added benefit of giving a place to hang things like fenders.  As an aside, I can't take credit for this idea.  I've seen it done on other boats but Jon's Solitude has the best photos so I'll give him the credit.

 

My plan is to get the hood and slide built and 'glassed today for an installation tomorrow.  I'm down to about 20 days left with very, very little time to spare.