More woodwork and cooker gimbals

During the last week I have connected the cockpit sole drain gutter to the cockpit drain pipework its just a simple piece of hose and a couple of Jubilee clips. Homework for last week was to make two cut outs in the panel which fits over the chart table one for the NASA GPS repeater and one for a three way switch panel which I intend to use for the power supply to the navigational instruments the idea being to leave some spare ways on the main switch panel for future use. The backs of the panels were then painted and left on one side to dry over the weekend. With the paint dry today I assembled the panel and fitted the GPS repeater and switch panel.

Panel in place

The plan is to cover the screws with some more recycled teak trim the same as around the electrical panel and I will leave cutting the opening for the VHF until I have the radio to hand.

I found one of the cooker gimbals and I had some concerns that there are no restraints to prevent the cooker sliding out of the gimbals in the event of a knock down so for my own peace of mind I decided to fabricate a new pair this was to be this weekends homework project.

One of the original cooker gimbals

The new gimbals were to be fabricated from some stainless steel sheet that I happened to have to hand, which is about 14 swg, so they were cut out and bent to shape in the vice a proper press would have produced sharper bends but I don't have easy access to one. Before bending the holes were drilled to allow the slots to be cut to take the cooker trunions.

Bending the stainless sheet

Ready for the slot to be cut out

After levelling up the cooker on two pieces of timber and setting it in the centre between the bulkheads I marked off and drilled the holes in the new gimbals. There are a number of holes in the bulkheads from previous cooker installations as can be seen from the photograph below so in order to not have to drill even more holes in the boat structure the cooker  has been placed to make use of some of the existing holes those remaining will be filled and faired. This photograph also shows the restraining device bolted across the slot, the black finish is a protective polythene layer stuck to the stainless sheet to protect the finish which is removed before dropping the cooker into place.

First of the gimbals fitted.

Cooker in place.

To complete the job I need to fabricate a locking device for the cooker there is a sliding bolt fitted to the lower left hand side of the front of the cooker I just need to fabricate a stainless steel socket to receive the bolt. All it needs now is a gas supply and as they say we will be cooking on gas it will be nice to be able to boil a kettle to make tea etc instead of having to rely on the thermos flask.