Maintenance

The time has come to move Shoal Waters from off the hardstanding in front of the workshop and into the Hay Barn.

Here’s the reason why. It’s not easy trying to work on the boat when she’s open to the elements. This was taken a few days ago and, to be honest, it doesn’t rain this hard very often, but I think you get the point.

So, today’s boat task is to put Shoal Waters onto the working trailer and move her into the Hay Barn.

First things first, move the trailer close to the boat.

Then jack the boat up using a specially made beam to form the bridge at the front.

The beam bent a bit as you can see here, but not enough to worry about just yet. However, before the next lift I’ll reinforce the beam, probably with a length of 6mm steel bolted to one or both sides. For now it’s good enough as the wood is not old and therefore still quite strong.

With the hull lifted up sufficiently, the trailer could be rolled underneath the boat. This wasn’t as tedious as getting her off the trailer a few weeks ago, but still tedious enough to make me want to find a better way to do this before the next lift is required.

Finally the boat is on the trailer, the side supports are bolted in place, the centreline rollers adjusted and the beam removed.

Once one of the rollers touched the keel, the others were lifted to also touch and then bolted in position.

a thin piece of wood was put onto the front new cross beam but it wasn’t quite thick enough as you can see. Once Shoal Waters is in the barn I’ll fashion a better filler for both the new cross beams as these do not have rollers.

And finally into the barn. Here she is protected from the elements and the only thing that needs to be watched is your head when climbing in and out of the boat.

As usual I used a spirit level across the aft end of the cockpit to level the boat.

The trailer being blocked up just behind the wheels on both sides.

The port side blocking is about 75mm or 3″ taller than the other side due to the slope of the ground underneath.

Blocks were also added under the towing hitch…

…and under the back end of the trailer. This makes the whole thing very stable and the boat does not rock or threaten to tip over when you climb in and out.

The hardstanding is now clear of the boat…

I even put away all the wooden pieces that were used to block up the boat and trailer at various times. What is left is the lead ballast. I need to decide what to do with this. When it was originally cast by Charles Stock he had to melt the lead is stages, pouring each pot into the mould before melting the next.

This, unfortunately, meant that the layers only partially bonded together, you can see the layers in the ends of the pieces…

…and one has come apart. I should probably melt these down one at a time and recast them to the same size but in one go to get rid of the delaminating problem.

Still, that’s for another day. for now, Shoal Waters is under the barn roof and I can continue working on her without having to worry about the weather.

Well, once my feet are properly healed.

In the meantime, time for a cup of tea.

Today’s task, or at least the Shoal Waters related task since I have other tasks that I wish to carry out today as well, such as building a rope maker, is to drill the holes into the ends of the two new cross beams and then cut down and fit the u-bolts.

This is the jig I used to locate the holes in the correct position. It fits over the end of the beam and guided the drill bit until a small indentation has been cut into the metal. The jig is removed and a small diameter bit is used to drill right through the top wall of the beam. This was repeated for all four beam ends. After that the correct sized hole was drilled using the indentation to center the bit.

The next part of the process is to take a cross beam into the workshop and put it onto the drill press, supporting the other end to keep the beam perpendicular to the drill bit.

The jig is clamped to the end of the beam and the correct sized drill bit used to make an indentation in the beam. This is done on both ends and on both sides of the beam.

Here is the result of one end. The size of the indentation isn’t critical, it’s just there for the next stage.

A small hole is drilled through the wall of the beam, in this case a 3mm hole as this is the smallest bit the drill press will hold. Again this is done on both ends and both sides.

The large drill bit is then used to open up the hole to the correct size.

This results in a perfect fit for the u-bolt, which was the intention. This shows how a simple jig turns a complicated job into something a lot easier to achieve.

Finally, the u-bolt legs are cut to size and the beam is bolted securely onto to the trailer.

I only had time to do one of the beams this evening, I also spent some time using the CNC Route on another task which I also didn’t finish. Both of these tasks will be completed tomorrow.

Time for a cup of tea.

Just a quick update to the work on the working trailer. The M12 penny washers arrived late on Monday afternoon so I wasn’t able to get the work done then but had to wait until this afternoon instead.

The task for today was quite simple. Cut 35mm off each of the legs of the six u-bolts and use the shortened bolts to fix the cross-beams to the trailer in the place that I need them to be, which is on top of the side-beams.

This is the first of the six done and you can see the two M12 penny washers underneath the standard M12 washer upon which the bolts sits, ensuring that there is enough thread to give a strong joint.

It didn’t take long to do all six u-bolts, about an hour all told and here are the cross beams now done. I will paint the cut ends of the bolts with something to prevent them from rusting, but that will have to wait for a dry day.

The taxt task on the trailer is to fit the two new cross-beams and for this I need to drill two 13mm holes in each end of the beams and these need to be perpendicular to the beam and as a result parallel to each other. Not only that but they must straddle the side-beams exactly both ends otherwise the u-bolts will not fit.

This will be a case of measure about a dozen time to absolutely ensure that the holes will be drilled in the correct place before actually drilling the holes. This suggests a jig that slides over the end of the beam so that the holes, drilled through the holes in the jig, are in the same place from the ends of the beams which are almost exactly the same length. By almost exactly I mean less than 1mm difference, which is close enough.

More on that in a separate post.

For now, time for a cup of tea.

There’s not been much work done on Shoal Waters for the last seven weeks, I had minor surgery on both feet which has meant I’ve been unable to walk properly due to the dressings and the discomfort, if not outright pain.

Now that my dressings have changed to less obtrusive ones and I can walk, sort of, I can get on with things that do not require me to wear shoes, that’s agony, nor kneeling down as putting my feet in that position is also just a tad painful.

However, the work needs to get started as the evenings are getting darker and I still have a great deal of work to do.

Today’s task is to start work on the trailer.

In order to work on the railer I needed to move it out of the weeds that have grown around it and onto the drive so that both sides are accessible.

Each of the u-bolts holding the three under-slung cross-beams were cut using an angle grinder. I could possibly have removed a few of the nuts but to be honest, that would have been a lot of work for a only a little gain, so I bought a pack of 20 metal cutting disks for the angle grinder from Amazon yesterday and once they had arrived today I was able to get going.

Then each of the legs of the bolts were drifted out with a hammer and drift. One or two of the legs had to be hammered really hard to get the to move due to the rust, but they all came out eventually.

With all the rusted u-bolts removed, the cross-beams were put on top of the side beams. The rollers were taken out at this point as they tipped the beam over if left in place.

New u-bolts were then put into place as shown here. I was unable to get shorter ones that still fitted so these longer ones will be cut down once all is ready to be reassembled.

I didn’t tighten up the nus, they were just put on to stop the u-bolts from falling out.

The threading on the legs of the u-bolts is onlu just enough to allow the nuts to be tightened up, but I noticed that on one u-bolt the thread seemed to be short as you can see here.

Comparing it to one of the other u-bolts I have in the workshop, the thread on this u-bolt is certainly too short for these cross-beams. I’ll use that on one of the two new cross-beams which are taller than the three old ones, and use one of the other u-bolts with a longer thread.

As you can see, the thread now extends to below the washer.

However, the thread still isn’t really long enough and will stop the nuts from being tightened down completely, so I have ordered some M12 penny washers, which are 2mm thick and 30mm in diameter, to put under the smaller washer seen here. Two per leg will easily allow the nuts to be fully tightened down.

That’s all I’m going to do today as even walking around causes my feet to hurt and I’ve had enough. The next task will be to cut the legs down to the correct size once the washers arrive, drill two holes in each end of the new cross-beams and fit those in place. At that point it will be possible to but Shoal Waters back on the trailer and wheel her into the Hay Barn.

Mind you, I’ll have to clear out a space for her first as Naiad’s trailer is in there covered in various bits and bobs.

Having two trailers is a little bit of a problem in two ways. Firstly there is the nomenclature. Since both will be used for both boats at different times, calling them Naiad’s Trailer and Shoal Waters’ Trailer is technically not correct, so I’ve decided to call this one the working trailer and the other the travelling trailer. This one will only be used for working on the boats and the other will now only be used to transport the boats. Seems like a good idea.

Secondly, what to do with the trailer that isn’t in the Hay Barn? We don’t have any other space for it under cover and leaving it out all year. in all weathers round will cause it to rot away. So, I’ll also have to build a small shelter of some description for the trailer that isn’t in the hay barn. Two steps forward, one step back.

Time for a cup of tea.

And a soak in the hot tub. I ache!