A Little More Boat Work

I have taken a week off at work after such a tough time in New Mexico and the best way I can think of to relax, is to try to finish up a bunch of work on the boat.

The girls were quite surprised to see this porthole after a ran it across a wire wheel and then polished it with some Brasso. The portholes are made of bronze and normally have a brown patina after weathering like the one on the right. Luann thought I had spray painted the shiney one with gold paint when I came walking in with it in my hand. It takes some time to get them to look this nice, but I like it. If you look closely in the center of the polished porthole, there is a little tab sticking up. This is a ring on the outdoor side of the glass for mounting a bug screen in it. I bought some stainless steel screen from a craft store that should do the job nicely.

I have finally finished the roof of the cabin and the mount for the base of the mast, called the tabernacle. The build-up is pretty close to what the factory mount looks like.

The top-down view shows the symetry of the base. It took about 60 hours of work to get it into shape. As I have mentioned in a previous post, there is a center screw threaded all the way down into the top of the newel post. The four corner screws have been drilled down through the stainless plate above the newel post and tapped with 10 x 24 threads to ensure the tabernacle is solidly tied to the newel post and inner plate. Other work has been to finish removing the rest of the trim and sand or wire wheel the deck down in preparation for painting. I'm hoping I can get the primer on the whole upper side tomorrow. I even removed about 1/2 of the wood trim inside too, and sanded down the original teak wood (what was left of it) and painted it with Cetol teak wood preservative. More pictures to follow.