More wheel house

I should probably start by saying I'm going to stop crying about the winter that won't end. I know it's close to giving up the beast, but after the 6" storm we had two days ago, and lows in the single digit this week, it's fighting to the bitter end. The high today was around 26 degree F, but with the sun gathering strength, the cold air temperature can no longer sustain the snow, and it's quickly receding. Given the air temperature is still below freezing cold, having the boat facing south, along with the strengthening sun, heats the inside of the boat up quickly, and I really don't have to run the heater at all.

I finished trimming the windows, and also got some color on the wood. The window trim is basically a house style detail being a 1/2" x 2 3/4" casing, a 3/4" x 2 1/4" stool, and a 1/2" x 2 3/4" bonnet under the stool. All the reveals are a 1/4".  It's a simple look, but I think it's legitimate.  

Some more progress has been made in the wheel house, and I'm inching up on getting the wood work completed. The layout was finalized, and more compromises were made. We were pretty dead set on having a 240 volt clothes drying machine and a 120 volt clothes washer, but in the end, having two units just took up too much space. In the space where the clothes dryer was going to go, I built a base cabinet with two large  drawers, and two doors underneath. Because the drawers are so wide, I used 3/8 plywood for the bottoms vs the usual 1/4". I'm planning on the drawers being used for paper charts and other things navigation.  The drawer fronts are not installed yet as I just  fitted the boxes in place.
 
Just aft of the new base cabinet is the opening for the compact LG washer/dryer combo unit. Out of all the units I looked at on line, the LG units have the best, most consistent reviews. I'm a little leery of it's ability to dry clothes with only 120 volts, so I have it in the back of my head that a decent working clothes line might be in order... probably something on the roof running off of the mast.

The large opening starboard of the instrument dash area is where the electrical distribution panel  is going to go. I had some sort of cut twice/measure once thing going on and screwed up the door that houses the electric panel. I found out this mistake today as I was fitting all the shiny parts I've made in the last week.

I have the wheel house counter top fabricated and dry fitted in place, but not not yet installed. Before the top gets installed,  I need to land all the wires on the bulkhead behind the distribution panel door. I used THHN for the primary wiring behind the walls, and will land all that on terminal strips. From the terminal strips, to the distribution panel, I'm using a flexible, tinned, marine wire. I have about 90% of the boat wire pulled to the area under the dash, and landing it with the top off is going to be  huge vs lying on my back. I realize I'll still be doing some wiring while laying down, but I want to get as much done while it's relatively accessible.

While I was fabricating in the barn last week, I decided to make the panel that finishes covering the dry exhaust/intake stack. Because the stack is such a large fixture, I decided to make this panel a raised panel. A large, flat piece of plywood just didn't feel right. The cherry veneer plywood is for sure nice material, but in my opinion, is a little too perfect. The air dried cherry I am using oozes character, and really puts the plywood to shame in regard to interest.  Being in the center of the room and such a visual element, this large raised panel looks spot on.

Here's to the coming Spring.

Cheers

Console

Winter continues to grip our part of the world but from how hot the sun is beginning to feel on my skin as I move through our frozen world, I know it will soon ease, and I'll be back to work.

While I'm not yet finished with the console, I'm well on my way, and for some reason this particular project has me feeling good. I guess, after all these years, finally seeing the command center beginning to take shape has me feeling like I  might actually be getting somewhere.

As you can tell, I move the wheel to the center of the wheel house. This was for sure the right move, and so far, the layout feels like it's happening. 

To port of the console, is the navigation desk and to starboard is more counter space with the electrical distribution panel below. The nav desk is 30" tall, and the console is 36" tall, with the gauge board being 20" deep x 30" wide.  The surround the console sits upon is framed  up out out of solid cherry stock. Sticking with my shoe string budget, and using materials I have on hand, I made the console out of solid cherry. I had debated using cherry plywood for the  console, but by the time I treated the ply edge's with solid stock, I'd have double the labor and it would look like I edged plywood.

Keeping with my philosophy of having future maintenance and servicing or remodeling requiring as  little bending or contorting  as possible, I hinged the console dash using a stainless piano hinge. Having the dash hinged already has paid off as I needed to alter a plywood bulkhead to fit the engine controls, and it for sure made that job easy by being able to quickly lift up the dash and make the cuts. Two screws will hold the console fast.

The only gear I have fit so far into the console is the engine and generator controls, and the bow thruster control. I left enough room to fit a row of switches under the engine and generator panel. Depending on how large of a chart plotter screen I go with, I think I can fit a small chart plotter in the dash above the generator panel. The radar screen is going to either going to hang from the ceiling or sit on the counter to starboard. The VHF radio will be to port of the console so it can be used from either the captain seat or the navigation desk. For reasons relating to layout, I placed the engine and throttle controls to port. In order to not feel like I was reaching around the wheel, I pulled the engine and throttle controls out a bit by creating a column. The compass will reside on the shelf above the console right at the base of the windows.

To starboard of the console is where the electrical distribution panel will be installed. The distribution panel, like the console will be hinged. Access under the console will be via a small door  under the wheel or through the hinged door the electrical panel resides in ( and by lifting the hinged console).

I'm getting close to wrapping up the carpentry work in the wheel house, and am almost at the point where I could get some finish on the wood. I've been sanding as I go, but there's still a days work of bunging screw holes, sanding off scribe lines and getting rid of dust.

Cheers



   

Another settee, another drawer needing a notch

Every morning at 5:30 or so,  I step out on to our back porch to do my wood stove duties, and while I can feel the cold, the echo of splitting kindling bouncing back from the frozen trees and earth, really announces the below zero mornings. A long stretch of  below zero nights and daytime highs in the single digits, and low teens, has finally given the Ohio river a crust of ice we've  not seen since the late 1970's. On these frozen mornings as I gather kindling, I  have recently heard a great horned owl's deep, hollow calls, and I feel better knowing the earliest mating bird species in North America has begun  tending it's nest. A cold winter  has lost it's novelty, and I'm ready for spring.

During this type of weather, "for pay" work has come to a standstill, but I continue to make progress on board. This week found me routing the six inch heat duct from the salon in to the wheel house via a galley cabinet, and the wheel house settee. Because I'm getting ready to build the wheel house console, I wanted to tidy up some of the elements under the console. I connected the air line manifold under the console so I can hook  my air tools to this area vs routing  air hose from the lazarette, and also made up the air connection for the air horn. I cleaned up some of the wiring under the console and got it temporarily strapped to the  forward bulkhead, and also connected my two 30 amp shore power feeds to the smart plug inlets. I built the wheel house settee, mounted some of the galley cabinets, and all in all had a pretty decent week.

We have a settee in the salon, and now another in the wheel house. Besides having another item checked off of the list, I needed the wheel house settee built in order to verify the final position of the wheel. The final dimensions of the settee are 46" wide x 72" long.  The table will collapse down and make for a full sized berth. There are three drawers under the settee along with the 6" air conditioning  duct that feeds the wheel house.  I purchased one pedestal for the table, but I'm going to have to either add another pedestal, or build some creative folding brackets to support the table when it's collapsed for berthing. The settee benches have removable seats for stowing life jackets. I plan on having cushions made for the seats, but for near future the seats will be hardwood. For the seats, I used 3/4 cherry plywood, and glued on solid stock, rounded over, to finish the edge. The seats look good, and will do just fine until funds for an upholsterer can be found ( way down on the list ).  A strategic cleat and some Velcro hold the seats fast. I'll have to look at head room pretty close, but I think there's room for a small cabinet or shelf above the settee on the bulkhead wall. At least one of the drawers will have to be notched to accept the table pedestal, and two drawers if I add another pedestal. 

The layout of the console has the wheel centered on the port side fixed window. To port of the wheel is the navigation desk, to starboard is a fixed cabinet that will hold  charts and other stuff. The height of the wheel house console will be 36", and the height of the navigation desk will be 30". Right now, the wheel is 16" off of forward bulkhead. With the wheel on the port side center window, the navigation desk feels cramped. I'm going to move the wheel from it's current off center local,  to be on the center line of the wheel house. This  move will represents the helm pump moving 13" to starboard. I'll be able to leave the welded pedestal in place and will only have to fabricate a bracket to weld to the existing  pedestal. If I were to cut, move, and re weld the pedestal, I'd be getting in to foam and paint damage to the master cabin ceiling. The distance between the wheel and the settee is 52".  Besides moving the helm pump to the center of the wheel house, I'm going to push it 2" further away from the bulkhead. The additional 2" will make the console 18" deep, which makes me feel better,  and I still will have adequate room between the captain's chair and the settee. The navigation desk will be 24" deep along with the cabinet to starboard of the wheel. The console will now be "notched" in to the forward array which makes the captains chair/ work, the desk work, and the space between the back of the chair and settee work. Between I pads, smart phones, and inexpensive chart plotters, I wonder if  paper charts are fast becoming a thing of the past. Technically, I'm the last year of the baby boomers, and I still write checks and carry cash in my wallet, so I'll carry charts until the winds of change blow in my window. Personally, I like looking at charts and look forward to plotting our way.

Building the galley wall cabinets last summer, I had  mocked up the salon ceiling in order to get the angle for the cabinet doors. I had left plenty of meat on the port side style to fit the cabinet to port side wall along with enough wood on the top rail to scribe the cabinet to the ceiling. The only problem is that the actual ceiling angle changed a little from my mock up to the actual site built ceiling. This slight oversight, while not crazy, had me scribing the top rail of two of the doors to make the wall cabinets look good. I"m not 100% pleased having to have scribed the door rail, but I do like the way the doors look, and especially like how the angled raised panels match the camber of the ceiling. I had to cut about 3/4" from one of the microwave cabinet doors, and the same from the outbound large wall cabinet door. 

It seems like every day I show up at the boat, I bring 50 lbs of something on board, so I needed a few cabinets installed to be able to start stowing "stuff".  Between the few galley cabinets and the wheel house settee, I now have some decent topside tool stowage that helps me out  by not having to run down below to get "stuff".

I'm going to continue on with the wheel house, so the next order of business is to get the console to some level of completion. I'm  not going to be able to button her up as I have to leave room to land wires and run controls.

Cheers

Wheel house sheathed

The wheel house walls, like all the walls on board, are sheathed in 1/2" cherry veneer plywood.  I'm a little amazed that between the wheel house walls, the dry exhaust stack, and the stairs for accessing the lower level, I' burned up nine sheets of plywood.  Those nine sheets represent sheets of cherry, and don't take in to count the two sheets of AC plywood I used that are hidden under the wheel house cabinets. I have some decent off fall left from cutting that will go in to filling in some less conspicuous areas, so not much plywood waste will go to the boat yard's wood fired boiler.

Sheathing is pretty straight forward, but it does take some time due to the complex shape. When I say complex shape, I'm using the plumb and square shape of a house as a reference. My wheel house has the walls,  by design,  a few degrees out of plumb, and a three inch camber over the 11' length of the wheel house. So every sheet has to be scribed, back cut, hand planed, and jacked around until it fits.

The out of plumb wall thing looks good when you step back on the decks and look at wheel house, but it has given me a fit regarding the wheel house door. The boat yard has the boat blocked up a bit out of level looking at her from port to starboard, and with the wheel house door on the port side, the out of plumb wall is about double the design. The problem with this is that I built the door frame square on it's depth and water collects on the bottom of the frame and can't drain out. To remedy this problem, I used my die grinder with a rotary burr, and cut a little channel to run the water out. The channel works good, and once she's launched and sitting level, this will no longer be an issue.

The windows are 2" thick, and the walls are 5" thick. Because of this, I had to create an extension jamb between the plywood and the window frame. Being most familiar with a certain style of trimming  out a window, I created a window stool before installing the extension jambs. The window stool extends past the plywood by 3/4", and will receive a 1/2" bonnet under  the stool to trim out the underside of the stool. The window casings will be 1/2" thick and will cover the extension jamb/plywood joint while finishing the trim detail. All the reveals on the windows are a 1/4". I left the jambs off of the window clamp ring by 1/4", the stool will be proud of the bonnet and casings by 1/4", and the casing edge will be 1/4" off the edge of the jamb. The window stool edge was rounded over using a 3/8 round over bit in the router, and all the other edges will be eased by hand sanding. I used screws to hold down the stools, and all the other parts, jambs, casings, and bonnets are fastened by the nail gun using galvanized finish nails.

Looking at the front of the wheel house, I used some to the reverse rake to create a 7" wide x 10" tall chase directly under the wheel house windows. The wheel house windows lean out at 7 degrees, but the wall under the widows is plumb as she will sit on her water line.  This part of the wheel house wall, the aft salon wall, and the water tight bulkhead on station # 9 are the only plumb walls on board. I created this chase so I could fit hose for a window defroster system and also to house windshield wiper motors. The window stool under the two fixed center windows is removable, while the two stools under the port and starboard operational windows are installed for good.  The basic layout of the front wall will be a navigation desk @ 30" above the floor to the port side of the wheel, and a 36" tall top will start from the desk and wrap around the starboard side of the wheel house all the way over to the stairway. The desk and the console top will both project 24" off of the wall. The 36" tall console/cabinet gives me a huge area for all kinds of stuff.

With the walls now finished, the finished width of the opening getting up to the wheel house is 26 1/2". This is an important dimension as I have to be able to get the 24" wide clothes washing/dryer machines in to this area. This leaves the stairwell going down below with a finish width of 25". The down bound companion way is a fuzz  narrow, but is OK comfortable for my 6', 200 lb frame.

Trimming out the stairwell took up the most time, and I'm happy with how it worked out. I used 1" thick stock with 1/2" dado's cut in to it to cover the edges of the plywood.  When it's all said and done, the console top will die into the angled companion way top, and a cabinet will be fitted above that as to not interfere or requiring notching the trim of the small window in that corner.

Once the jambs were installed, I was able to fit the last piece of ceiling on both the port and starboard side.

The windows are completely trimmed on the wheel house front, but I still have to case the side windows and the door. The door needs to have some insulating paint on the jambs to create a thermal break as to not allow sweating thus dampening the fiberglass insulation I'm going to jamb in that opening prior to casing it. The casings are going to be 1/2'' plywood that I'll glue veneer to the edge. I don't want to create a fancy casing profile using solid stock, so the flat ply casings will work great for me.

I think I'm going to stay in the wheel house and get started on the navigation desk and console framing. The console is large enough for me to crawl in to so a removable panel will have to be created.  Ease of access to the console is paramount as darn near everything of electrical importance home runs to this area.

Because there's no finish on any of the newly installed wood, some of the detail is hard to see. One of the things I like most about working with wood is the instant transformation one sees as soon as finish is applied. Really, I just like seeing any transformation that has me moving closer to launch.

Cheers

Wheel house door sheathing

The boat yard has been closed for the last ten days, so yesterday was the first day I've been back to boat in that amount of time. I've left my camera at the boat, but I did remember to bring it home with me so here's an update.

The new year has rolled in here with some raw weather. A storm found us last night, and as I type this update this morning, the temperature outside is -1 F. The lows foretasted for next week are -15.

The wheel house door is aluminum, and instead of sheathing the wheelhouse side of the door with aluminum, I decided during building of the door, that I would sheath it in Cherry. This is a fairly straight forward door, but like all things engineered by the seat of ones pants, I have to build a little forgiveness into my designs. The biggest guess I had to make was how much of a gap to leave between the door stops and the door to accommodate a sealing gasket. For this purpose, I made the hardwood stops easy to be removed by installing threaded inserts into the door. The threaded inserts are installed by drilling a proper sized hole, then using a special tool to crimp the insert into the hole in the aluminum. This is almost identical to a rivet, but is extremely robust. I bedded the hardwood stops in silicone and used a 10-24 x 1.5" stainless pan head screw to fasten the stops. The screws are 12" on center.  The other alternative to fasten the stops to the jamb would have been to through bolt the stops in place, but if one ever have to remove a stop later down the road,  the casings would also have to be removed to access the nuts. Through bolting is also kind of sloppy in my opinion and alignment seems to be a fuzz more difficult when through bolting.

I sheathed the door with 1/2" Cherry  plywood. Because I did not want to see the edge of the plywood I turned to my tried and true method of ironing hardwood veneer. I've been using this iron on edge banding for years now, and have never had any issue with the adhesive failing. Once you iron the edge on, you trim it off with a special tool that cuts both sides flush in one pass. A light sanding with 220 is all that's needed to make the edge perfect.   I love the edge banding system.

I'm totally happy with how the door looks sheathed in cherry vs sheathed in aluminum, but I do have one issue I'm going to have to deal with. The Trioving lockset fits good in the thick door, but the dead bolt trim does not work with the thickness created by the 1/2" ply. In order to make this work, I'll have to remove the sheathing, and cut square around the deadbolt, then brake a aluminum trim piece to hide the edge of the ply in this area, and re install the ply. I don't have a picture showing this issue, but the lock set is installed and working correctly although the dead bolt does not look as it should. 

The wheel house walls are almost finished being sheathed, and most of the window trim is installed. The stairwell ties in to the wheel house and salon sheathing and is burning up some time. There's a lot of confabulated, ridiculous boat type detail in the stairwell area, but I should have it wrapped up next week.

After almost a two week absence from working on her, I can tell you it feels great to be back working on moving things forward.

Cheers

 

Ceilings

As I sit and type this post the sun has just began it's climb and a heavy frost covers our front yard. In my last post, I had mentioned how Winter was sneaking up on us so I had to get the barn put back together. Well, over the last few days, Winter has made and appearance with a  heavy "thunk", as the temperature outside is a chilly 15 degrees Fahrenheit.  A large Arctic high has settled in over us, and will be planted  here for the  next five days or so keeping things on the cold side.

The ceilings in both the salon and the wheel house are #2 - 1"x6" V groove, white pine. My original plan was to paint the ceilings a traditional yacht bright white finish, but after talking to a contractor I do work for, he convinced me to pickle the wood. Pickling is a simple treatment of wiping on a semi clear white stain, then wiping it off. This gives the wood a bit of color, brightens things up, while still allowing the character of the wood to show through. If we end up not liking it, we can always scuff the ceilings and paint them a solid color. The ceilings will get a few coats of satin urethane to seal them.

The salon ceiling is completed, and the wheel house ceiling is close. When I mean close, I'm talking about one board has yet to be installed on on both the port and starboard side. In the case of the wheel house, the wall material has to go up before I can finish the lasts two ceiling boards, as those two outboard planks have to land on nailers attached to each side wall.

The salon ceiling was about as straight forward as one could get regarding installation. The salon ceiling  has a nice  camber to it which I think looks great  now that the ceiling is in place, and the taper of the width aft to forward is not that great. The salon ceiling frames connect directly to the wall frames because the windows are about a foot down from the ceiling. Because the windows are a foot down from the ceiling, I was able to create a chase without having to cut in to the steel frames on either side of the salon. I have one " in ceiling" access panel that goes from the exhaust intake stack to the mast step, and that panel is only about 4' in length.

The wheel house ceiling has a few more challenges. The wheelhouse ceiling has a slight camber as it sheds water from fore to aft on a decent grade. The tricky issue with the wheel house is that the windows and door openings go almost to the ceiling. Because of the window opening height, I could not create a wiring chase along the walls. The bulk of the wiring enters the wheel house via a chase below, with at least six spare 1" conduits ran to a junction box in the engine room. On the two center forward windows, there was room for the ceiling boards to miss the trim ring. On each of the outboard forward windows, the ceiling boards hit the trim ring. I really did not want the ceiling hitting the trim ring, so I held each ceiling board off the trim ring 1/4". Because the gap is consistent, and the trim ring is black along with the angle one has to view the install, the gap is not at all noticeable. Because of how the windows are installed, if I ever have to remove the window, I'm pretty sure I'll have to cut the ceiling to do so. I debated holding the ceiling 1" away from the trim ring, but that would have looked bad, and would have required complicated trim to make it look reasonable as the foam would have showed.

If I ever have to remove the windows, I'll deal with the ceiling at that time, and call any modifications a repair. Because of how the ceiling is framed, and the fact that I neglected to install a  nailer for the ceiling at the two forward side windows, I have a small area of ceiling that will require a little bit of work to finish the install. The fix is not really that complicated, but in order to make it look tight and right, a piece of cherry with a tongue on it will have to be fabricated and fastened to the widow frame right above the trim ring (  more on this later if I remember).

Now, I'm on to fitting the side wall material in the wheel house, and also having to finish the jambs on the door before I can wrap up the ceiling. Getting the ceilings and walls lined really makes me feel like I'm making progress because the  foam is starting to vanish, and the inside is starting to  look quite shippy.  The bad news is that on December 1, the boat  yard is only open Monday-Friday 8-5... no more weekends. The yard holds this schedule until March 1, so I'm going to loose a noticeable amount of work time over the next 12 weeks.  I'll be able to make up some of this time because Winter weather kills my for pay work schedule, and I for sure have more time, but on the flip side of that scenario, I"m covered up busy with paying work right now and am really booked solid for the next ten months.  Depending on how busy the weather lets me work for pay, and how reliable  my cash flow is, I  might end up hiring out some of the straight forward mechanical work I have to get done to some good, reliable contractors I know. Now that I've been at Washington Marine for a few weeks now, I've seen  how they work, and I for sure can tell you that they'd be at the top of the list for some of the jobs I have in mind. We'll see how all this schedule thing works out as the time is fast approaching where we have to commit funds to leasing harbor space for the up coming season.

Cheers

I've started to finish

The last few weeks have found me rushing around to get the boat weather tight, and starting to organize my thoughts on  how best to manage the build to the finish. Like most things on this project, a lot of work needs to be done in a certain order before progress becomes visible.

With winter sneaking up on us, I had to get the barn put back together. The  mornings are getting colder and with the heavy dew making it's way in to the barn, some of my tools are showing signs of rust. It took me a weekend to frame the opening back in, find the correct insulation, and trim the door opening to be ready for the crew who were re installing the door. I have to be able to fabricate much of the wood work for the interior in the barn, so having it weather tight and able to be heated is a big deal to keep the boat build moving. As I write this post, the barn is now back together, and while it's still a mess, it sure feels good to have all the space back.

The dry exhaust stack for the engine room is one of those deals that not much else can be started  until this part is finished. Getting this finished turned out to be a bit of a pain as some poor measuring on my part  had me doing a few  things over. I framed access panels  on both the port and starboard side of the stack. The port side panel is larger as to allow me to install the exhaust pipe through the panel. I also had to configure the panel opening to work around the microwave cabinet so I don't have to remove the cabinet to replace the exhaust pipe.

The  exhaust stack was the last big welding job I  have to do inside the boat, and it feels good to be able to take the big generator out of the back of my truck and leave it in the shop.

Now that the foam is all finished, I wanted to get the ceiling in the master cabin, and get that room pretty much wrapped up. The ceiling is 3 1/4" pine bead board painted an off white. To make things easy on myself, I primed and painted one coat of top coat paint on the boards to prevent bare wood from showing once things start moving around. The ceiling  job was pretty straight forward, and the only tricky part was building the removable access panel on either side of the center beam. The access panel is for throttle and engine controls, hydraulic lines for the anchor winch, hydraulic lines for the steering system, and some conduit. The center beam is about 3/8" lower than the ceiling, and instead of wrapping it in bead board, I decided to wrap it in Cherry. I needed a board over 10' long, and instead of joining two together to get the length, I found a long one on the bottom of my now air dried stack of lumber. The longest boards I have also  happen to be the widest boards. As you can see from this picture, this particular board is over 19" wide and dried pretty darn straight. After I finish milling the faux beam, I'll install it in a day or so, and the master cabin will have a finished ceiling in it.After the master cabin ceiling is finished, another day of work should have the guest cabin dressing room ceiling completed which will also mean all the ceilings below will be finished.

Another small detail I needed to get squared away was building a proper set of steps to get in to the boat. I've been using a ladder, and given the amount of trips and quantity of material I have to get on the boat, the ladder was the old accident waiting to happen. I  also have a lot of people who like to stop by, and any thing I can do to prevent them or me from getting hurt helps everyone in the long run. I also want to do right by the boat yard, and keep my operation in such a way as to minimize any exposure.

The tooling I need to finish the job is also getting to the point where I'm comfortable. I wish I would have built all the engine room cabinets before we move her, as it would be nice to be able to start organizing the floating shop. Once in a while I do find myself borrowing a tool off of my truck, but for the most part the boat is now tooled up.

Boat building and schedules don't seem to get along in Conallville, but I"m going to take another stab at it. My plan is to have the bulk of the wood work finished by sometime in January. Once the wood work is finished and coated with urethane, I can focus on getting the needed systems up and running for our May/June launch. Without going into a bunch of detail, the systems I'm talking about are AC/DC electric, hydraulic, and engine controls.

Cheers