A significant step forward today with the fitting of the portholes and Houdini hatches. Richard and his apprentice (me) spent the afternoon aligning them, drilling the holes and securing them with temporary wood screws. They will be removed for the exterior painting and then reinstalled using stainless steel screws.
With our luck 95% of the screw holes in the new portholes didn’t align with the original holes. Consequentially new holes had to be drilled in the shell. To compound the problem some of the new holes slightly overlapped the old holes.
Having managed to fit all the portholes I asked Richard (the joiner) if he would make a start on fitting the Houdini hatches whilst I finished screwing in the final porthole. My hidden agenda was to avoid me having to screw the hatches to the steel. I’d already broken a number of screw heads doing a similar task with the fixing of the timber floor battens to the steel floor joists and didn’t want to be responsible for breaking a screw in the Houdini.
Each Houdini hatch is secured with 18 screws, so I calculated my odds of breaking either a drill bit or snapping a screw head were quite high. In the end all three Houdini hatches were fitted without any problems.
The ventilation holes in the roof were then covered with duck tape. Waiouru us now weatherproof!
Tomorrow I need to discuss the installation of the concrete ballast and roofing felt with Andy. Then we can make a start on the floor!
2 comments :
how come your boat is looking more and more like a U Boat?
It's more an "us" boat that a UBoat. Actually we though you were the one with the "ewes"
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