Boat launch 2011

My wife, Isobel, kindly took these great photos of the launch of our boat yesterday so I thought I'd post them on my blog.

Refurbishing the boat's windows

I'm a member of the Halberdiers Group on Yahoo and one of the other members, Henrik from Holland, wrote up a "how to" on taking out the Halberdier's windows. I thought I'd tackle the job of refurbishing my boat windows and with Henrik's guide I took out one of the sliding windows from my boat Negresco. Following Henrik's guide I managed to get the window apart into its constituent parts without resorting to drilling out old screws as Henrik needed to do with his. At the crucial point where I came to remove the jointing pieces of steel I soaked them in penetrating oil and very carefully managed to remove the screws without damaging the frames or the steel screw and jointing filet.

Next step was to get rid of all the corrosion on the aluminium frames. I removed most of it using a sharp pointed knife then steeped the frames in caustic soda solution for several minutes. The caustic soda attacked the corroded parts with gusto and I found that when I removed the frames from the solution and washed them down I could then remove the residue of corroded aluminium quite easily.

Having cleaned them up I then brazed on replacement bits of aluminium where required and brazed over any corrosion holes in the frames. I used special Aluminium brazing rods which I found on the internet from Durafix. These melt around 750C which is about 250C below where aluminium melts. I used a Butane/Propane mix but I still need to be careful as 250C is not a big margin.

The brazing worked quite well but you do need the stainless steel tinning brushes from Durafix even though they burn in the process of tinning the aluminium to be brazed. I then ground off the excess and polished up the frames.

I ordered new rubber seals off the internet from Seals+ Direct.

The came the hard part :- re-fitting new seals and re-assembling the frames at the same time. TIP : Use plenty of washing up liquid as a lubricant and a wooden mallet to hammer home the glass with new seals into the frames. From the photos below you will see that the fixed pane of glass has an indent on the bottom edge and the frameside edge. I needed to be careful to refit these in the correct place as the bottom indent corresponds to the drain hole in the frame and the side indent to the steel jointing filet. I re-used the old steel jointing filets and screws but I used plenty of Duralac anti-corrosion paste mixed with Lanolin for any steel to aluminium contact points. I also made holes in the flock lined rubber in the sliding window channel to correspond with the drain holes in the frame. The seals I used were :

US53 Rubber Square U Channel Section (Panel Thickness:4.5 mm, Height:8 mm, Wall Thickness:1.6 mm) £2.40 X metre : fixed window
FWR846 Flocked Lined Window Rubber (Glass Thickness/Width:4.75mm, Height/Thickness:10mm, Width:10mm) £3.45 X metre : sliding window channel
SN29 Solid Neoprene Rubber Strip (Size:25 x 1.5 mm) £4.05 X metre : re-fitting sliding window handle onto glass.
OWS782 Opening/Sliding Window Seals And Door Seals (Description:Blade with bead (0738), Size:19mm, Keyway:3 mm bead) : seal between fixed and sliding window panes fitted into slot on sliding window handle.

I then used Texflex PU, which I obtained from my local motor parts Factor, to stick a new u-shaped face rubber onto the non-sliding glass piece and Texflex to seal any aluminium to aluminium joints.

I then made an aluminium window lock to replace the long-gone original brass affair and riveted it onto the inner face piece.

To finish off I painted over the Texflex and brazed parts with Aluminium high temperature engine paint. I refitted the windows using closed cell neoprene between the coachroof and the flange of the window frames and roof and gutter sealant between the inserted part of the frame and the sides of the window recess. Gutter sealant is a butyl rubber based sealant which remains in a semi-dry paste like condition. This will make for easier removal of the windows if they need to come out in the future. It is similar to the window sealant originally used on the Halberdiers.

The following slideshow shows how much of an improvement I made. Of course I should have tackled the windows BEFORE I re-painted the deck and coamings!!

Woodworking and wood turning

I've put together a slide show of some of my creations since I started working with wood back in 2005. Round work all done on a Record CL3 lathe.

Redesign of inside of house

Not much to do on the boat in January and February so I started on the re-design of the downstairs part of the house. We bought the house with a lounge which had double sliding door access into the dining room. I changed this in the early nineties into a single hinged door access. This door was rarely closed and we found that the loounge was used as a thoroughfare from the hall to the dining room and conservatory. Eventually we got fed up with this arrangement and hence this project to close off the access door.

4 x 2's, three layers of giprock plaster board, rockwool and three coats of plaster each side later we had a solid wall instead of a wall with a door. This only left removing the dark brown painted dado rail,replacing the old brown painted pine skirting with new light oak skirting, replacing the window sill to match the new skirting and building an oak fire surround to finish the look. Oak skirting and sill was provided by MGM and Jewson (neither had enough good quality stuff to do the whole job) and I bought some kiln-dried brown oak from Fairlie sawmill.

Jim and Kenny are great guys at Fairlie sawmill and after a quick search through their kiln-dried stock we found the ideal piece for my new fire surround. When I got it home I cleaned it up a bit and sawed it into the 4 parts required to complete my design for the new fire surround.

This sawing process was a bit smoky and smelly because when I put a new band on my bandsaw to do the job I didn't notice that the band was coiled inside out. This meant that when I fitted it the teeth were pointing up and not down !! How it managed to cut 60mm brown oak like this I'll never know but it was a pretty slow job and I remember thinking that this sure is hard oak !! Stupid me - you live and learn as they say. I guess when I put a new blade on I will always remember to check the direction of the teeth. I only realised the problem at the end of the cutting process when I went to cut up one of the old bits of pine skirting and it started smoking too!!
Anyway, my thicknesser cleaned up the blackened edges of the "sawn" oak pieces easily and I proceeded to dowel the pieces of the fire surround together to make up my design. Installed it in place and gave it three coats of Tung oil to seal it and bring out the beauty of the wood.

Removing the old sill was a bit of a pain as I think the guy who installed it had a freebie that day on 2.5inch nails!

See the following slide show to view the finished rooms - sorry didn't remember to photo the build up of the wall and the making of the surround - the smoky sawing would have made an impressive photo!!

The oak skirting had to be drilled and nailed on as the modern "no more nails" products wouldn't stick it in place although I did use some to augment the drilling/nailing process. (Tip - don't try nailing oak without drilling as it will split).