Friday 5 May 2017

New keel bolt fitted

Last weekend I cut one of the new set screws to length and then set it up in the lathe and faced off the end then finished off by putting a chamfer on the first thread.


New keel bolt

Once the bolt was finished I set up a piece of 3/8" plate in the four jaw chuck and bored out a 11/8" clearance hole to produce a backing plate for the new bolt.


Boring the new backing plate


New parts and old bolt

On Monday morning I greased up the bolt with some water resisting grease gave the backing plate a good dose of PU40 sealant and inserted the bolt I was aiming for a torque of around 200 ft/lbs but my torque wrench would not go that far and trying to apply that amount on two long socket extensions was always going to be difficult so after I had got as far as I could I used the 65:1 drive to just tighten the bolt a little further. Apparently the Idea is to not tighten the bolt so much that it starts to crush the GRP moulding and this torque figure is considerably less than the maximum torque setting for the bolt in question especially I would think when using bolts of this size.


New keel bolt and backing plate

Now that the new keel bolt is in place I can get on with building some form of mounting for the batteries so that they can be secured to prevent any movement.

I have been giving some thought to the crockery stowage in the galley once the items are put through the opening a means of preventing them from wandering about in what is a comparatively large space I eventually came up with the arrangement in the photograph below once these have been painted I can then finish off in this area.


The idea being that these will be installed behind the front panels to restrain the crockery I took a bit of a guess with the sizes just hope that I can find something that will fit when the time comes.

For the remainder of the week I have been making up some more timber trim for the new panels in the saloon and galley areas no pictures I am afraid the aim is to try and get some varnish on them over the weekend.

I have done a bit more wiring namely the domestic water pump which now works just needs some plumbing and water tanks to complete and also the 12 volt supply to the wind instrument junction box, as posted previously I can't do any more with this until the mast is up.

To finish off today I started making the doors for the heads locker and the wine locker these will be the same arrangement as the galley lockers I have fitted all the plastic track ready for the doors. As an aside I sourced the track from Amazon and as well as the usual product review request message I got a message from a guy who wanted to know if I thought the track would be suitable to retain the glass in his snake tank now I don't know about you but I know very little about snakes other than some are harmless and some are dangerous and as he didn't give any indication as to his particular snakes are how do you answer that one?






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