Doors again

The first job on Monday was to glue and screw the left hand vertical section of the forward door frame in place then while waiting for the epoxy to cure I plugged all the screw holes, the plugs were cut from offcuts of timber left after cutting out the curved top section of the frame and glued in place with varnish.

Screw holes plugged.

I had made a stainless plate over the weekend and while the varnish on the plugs was drying I drilled through the door for the new latch and then fitted the plate followed by the door latch and the handles, unfortunately there are a number of redundant holes on the other side of the door in the blue laminate which were not covered by the new latch I am not sure what I am going to do with these at the moment but eventually I want to refinish both doors as the veneer on the opposite side of both doors needs some attention as well but this will be a job for the future as the main aim is to get the doors in place and out of the way.

Redundant screw holes etc

Stainless plate and new handles

On Wednesday I cut off the excess length of the plugs and sanded them flush and then faired in the various sections of the frame so that the door would open and close smoothly without sticking.

Frame faired  to allow door to close

I then moved on to the aft door beginning with temporarily screwing in place a piece of timber across the lower end of the door opening to support the door at its correct height to allow measurement of the door frame components, this led to the discovery that the sides of this door are not parallel they taper down by about 5mm at the bottom edge of the door, the sides of the opening are also not parallel, I can allow for this by tapering the frame side members.

Aft door set in position

I have sourced some more meranti for the aft door frame which I collected from a local timber merchant this morning, the supplier of the timber for the forward door frame did not have the required material in stock for the aft frame but could deliver from a central warehouse for £20 almost the price of the timber, the saloon bulkhead is much thicker than the forward heads bulkhead so requires thicker timber for the frame. After double checking that I had sufficient timber for the aft door frame I finished up the day by making and fitting a wooden block to take the catch plate for the forward door latch, this was screwed into place and the screw holes plugged. Over the weekend I shall make a new catch plate as the one that came with the latch would need some modifications before it could be used and as it is made of chrome plated brass I decided that I can do better with a piece of stainless steel.

Block for  catch plate mount

This weekend the aim is also to produce the curved section of the frame for the aft door then once the aft door has been fitted I still have to produce the covering board/architrave to cover the join between the door opening and the frame this will also form the door stops.