Continuing port bow repair

Apologies for the lack of a post last week but I was away sailing for a few days and didn't get home until Friday afternoon followed by a bit of a short week this week however I have been continuing with building up the port bow area the section at the top of the flair has taken most of the time I have been building it up with epoxy and glass tape. It has been necessary to sand this area back  every so often to try and achieve the correct profile.

From the above photograph it can be seen that I am almost at the point that I can begin to fill and fair the repair area but first I need to make a couple of templates up from the starboard side so that I can copy the flair onto the port side, that will be a job for Monday.

While I have been waiting for the epoxy to cure on the bow I finished off the cable links between the sacrificial anode and various underwater fittings namely the 'P' bracket, rudder gland, rudder stock, the engine exhaust skin fitting and the engine. This was carried out in 10awg tinned copper cable.

Links to the anode

Connections to rudder stock etc

The current homework project is the woodwork for the aft cabin, after looking closely at the original woodwork it appears that the ply itself is in reasonable condition it is only the veneer that is peeling off so I have decided to remove all the old veneer clean up the woodwork and then paint it white and then varnish the trim around the locker doors. The original veneer, which I think is real wood with a foil backing, was glued on with an impact adhesive and while the veneer proved to be fairly easy to remove with a wide flat wallpaper scraper the old adhesive proved to be a bit more stubborn eventually I found that the way to remove it was with a tungsten carbide scraper followed up by a good sanding. The internal divider and shelves in the aft cabin lockers have been covered in a red flock type finish which was fairly common in boats of this age it looks as if it was spray applied through the locker doors once the units had been assembled in place so the rear of the front panels will require some work to remove the over spray before painting.

Panels showing peeling veneer

Original veneer showing foil back

First panel with veneer removed

I am not quite sure what to do with the sliding locker doors these are thin ply with the veneer glued to each side and once the veneer has been removed they may be a bit too thin I can think about them while scraping off the old adhesive. I had to remove the door knobs to get the doors out, the knobs are aluminium secured from the back with mild steel screws and after 40 something years of corrosion I had to drill the screw heads off to be able to remove the knobs.

It is the Kent boat jumble this Sunday and one of the more satisfying upsides of a project like New Morning is that I have a legitimate reason to go and with a good chance that I will buy something that I actually will use.