I have to confess that, despite being a really nice day to be outside, I did very little work on Shoal Waters, But, mid-afternoon I had an order delivery and that got me going.
The first thing was to move the boat out from under the cover.
This was necessary since the new sampson post won’t go into the boat as it is too long. As you can see.
However, once that was done I could side the post through the deck, put the footer on and put it into the correct possition.
I put the old post top on the deck as a comparison. I have plenty of post extended above the deck, so making the new post 8″ will not be any cause for concern.
The next part of the task was to drill the pilot holes in the hog. I marked the aft edge of the footer before taking the post out, put the screws into the footer, put the footer into the correct position and then tapped the points of the screws into the hog with a drift and hammer. Then it was an easy job to drill the holes after that and screw the footer down for a dry fit.
The post was slid into the hole and down into the footer. It was a tight fit but it went in.
I mixed up some of the special epoxy that was delivered this afternoon. This is G/flex from West System and will work on White Oak timber due to it not being a rigid epoxy when cured. It has a slight flex, hence the name, meaning that the problems that a “normal” epoxy has with Oak does not occur.
Then it was back into the boat, smear the epoxy on the bottom of the footer, seat it in position and screw it down. You’ll notice that the inside edges of the top of the footer are chamfered.
The bottom of the post is now chamfered also and I took a fraction of a millimeter off each side of the post at the bottom so that it was not such a tight fit.
Doing this meant that I could put the post into the hole from the outside, slide it down and into the footer without having to move it around a few times until I got the correct position. The chamfers allow the post to be misaligned by about 10mm and it will still locate into the footer.
That’s all for today, I’ll continue on with the sampson post tomorrow once the epoxy has cured.
Time for a cup of tea.