BoatBlog

Steering

The rudder is now complete. It looks quite pretty, I must say. Brilliant white, gleaming stainless steel, and sturdy oak.

posted by Niel Malan @ 21:45 0 comments

Unmasked

When I took the masking off the rudder box, I found that there had been some paint creep under the masking tape. This left some of the edges a little raggedy. The lesson I learned is this case was not to mask right to a corner that's not very crisp. I think I'll add a thin line of balk trim, which will hide the raggedness and add some contrast.

posted by Niel Malan @ 13:33 0 comments

Groovy

Today I grooved the sheaves, and drilled out the holes. It's not very professional-looking sheaves, with the grooves much too shallow, but it will do the job, I believe.

posted by Niel Malan @ 13:29 0 comments

Wheels and shafts

Today I worked a bit on the blocks. What I did was to work on the sheaves. Instead of machining sheaves from virgin material, I decided to make new 12 mm sheaves from two 6 mm sheaves. We had them in a box, waiting of this job. To make them I turned down one face of each of six sheaves, so that only the groove was left on one side. These I then glued together with epoxy. This will leave an aesthetically pleasing black line down the centre of each shaeve.

These wheels now will have to be re-grooved to 12 mm.

I also made the axles of the sheaves, by turning down 12 mm stock stainless steel to 10 mm. The blanks are shown in the picture. They will still have to be turned down and drilled through, etc.

It's a very rough job, but I'm doing it this way to main momementum: I don't want to get stuck on details.

posted by Niel Malan @ 17:31 0 comments

Painting the rudder

Today I prepared the rudder box for painting. The plywood and oak do not make a pleasant colour combination, and the honey-coloured layer of Woodoc 50 did nothing to improve it. So I decided to paint the rudder white but leave the oaken battens it's natural colour. (This will echo the rest of the boat, where the sheer strakes are plain varnished, but the rest of the boat is stark white.) So today I masked the oak battens with masking tape. During the week the rudder will be painted by the spraypainter, when he paints drawing boards.

posted by Niel Malan @ 21:36 0 comments

Today I am making the blocks for my dinghy's rigging. I don't know what I'm doing really, since this is my first blocks to make ever. First I found a round piece of nylon to make the sheaves of, and then I marked out appropriate pieces of stainless steel sheet. In the top piece the markings can be seen, faintly.


Then I cut blanks out out of the sheet, and drilled pilot holes.


The four blanks are bolted together in a stack. The stack was then shaped together on the belt grinder.


Here's the blank cheeks, with the piece of nylon to cut the sheaves from, and a smaller piece of nylon that will serve as a bail.


I must be mad to attempt this. I should just buy some blocks over the internet.

posted by Niel Malan @ 19:42 0 comments

Today I made the mast retaining collar. It is a clamp-on device that prevents the mast from falling out should the dinghy capsize. I decided that this will be a better idea than the lasing around the gooseneck that the plans specify.

Here's the mast retaining collar hard at work retaining the mast. It seems to work well: I can pick up the dinghy by the mast when the collar is latched on. It is a shot of the underside of the bow seat. It really is painted bright white, but the accumulated dust of months of storage makes it appear brown and unpainted. The white spots are actually fingermarks in the dust through which the white shows.

posted by Niel Malan @ 08:04 0 comments