Refurbishment

I will soon be reaching the stage of the centreplate case replacement where I need to make a cardboard template for the sides. However, before that can happen I need to chisel away some of the old case side that is between the fore and aft blocks and the keel.This is tedious as it requires me to kneel or squat in an awkward and cramped position working with a sharp 6mm chisel being careful not to go too far and cut away too much.

Not something I enjoy much so I decided to do something else first.

First task is to remove the top strengthening piece from the removed case side. I wedged the old and slightly less old pieces of plywood apart with a screwdriver and was able to pull the two pieces apart by hand. This is the result. The lower piece has the batten I want to retain with some of the original plywood attached and you can clearly see just how badly deteriorated it is. This did make it quite tiring to remove the plywood since it had no mechanical strength and only came away in small pieces. Still, after some time I had most of it removed.

This is the batten showing the outer face and the removed plywood flakes.

And this is the other side with some of the damaged plywood still attached. I decided that trying to get this off with a chisel was far to difficult and thus I was doing it the wrong way.

So, I removed the remains of the brass screws…

…and planed the rest off, the work of just a few minutes. I really should have just removed the screws and then used the planer instead of messing around with a chisel.

The result is very good.

I still need to remove the diagonal brace, seen here, it’s the longer piece in the middle and this might be a little more difficult than the first piece as it has a rounded edge making the planing of the side opposite to the rounded side a little more problematic. Still, it will be easier than trying to get the plywood off by hand.

Following this successful task I turned my attention to the centreplate case. The bit highlighted in red is the forward block and the bit highlighted in green is the bit I have chiseled out! There’s not a lot of room in there.

I turned my attention to the portlights after that. One side of each light was cleaned with Isopropyl Alcohol and a strip of Butyl tape applied making sure to cover the holes.

The light was then placed on the cabin side and six 5mm flanged bolts pushed through the holes in the perspex, the tape and the holes in the cabin side, but left protruding.

Some more Butyl tape was wound around each bolt just below the flange and the bolt then pushed in as far as I could by hand..

On the inside a washer and a self-locking nut were put onto the bolt and tightened up by holding a hex key on the outside and using a nut driver on the inside. That metal bar you can see outside is a hex key in the bolt on the outside being stopped from moving by a lead block so that I could tighten the nut up in the inside. Both forward lights were done with this lead block method but the two aft ones were close enough to the hatch for me to reach inside and outside at the same time, making the job a lot easier.

The tightening is done in stages so as not to crack the perspex. The bolts were tightened in opposite pairs so as to prevent bending to much. The nuts were not tightened up as far as possible as it is cold outside at the moment and the Butyl tape is not very flexible as a result. The nuts were done up about 60% of the way and then left. This will allow the tape to be compressed slowly an in a couple of days I’ll tighten then up to about 75% and then to 90% a couple of days after that. That will be tight enough to make a very good seal but to tight enough to squeeze all the tape out of the seal. This tape never goes hard, so leaving a bit unsquashed means that if there is ever a leak then I can tighten up the nuts a little to make a better seal. Any tape the squeezes out of the joint will be removed by scoring it around with a sharp knife and pulling the excess away

Here are the two starboard port lights. It would have been better if the Butyl tape were brown, but it isn’t so the portlights will stand out a lot more than they did before. It won’t affect the sailing performance, just the aesthetics and, being male, that doesn’t bother me much.

Time for a cup of tea.

The first task of the day was to finish the navigation lights refurbishment and to that end I made a start after breakfast and my first cup of tea. The new bulb holder needed to be put in place and connected, a second mirror reflector cut out and installed, the gasket put in place and the housing screwed back on to the boat.

The new bulb holder fitted well and you can see in the photo that the connections have been made. The negative cable screwed to the fitting using crimped eye connectors and the positive cable connected using a lever connector. The new holder is sufficiently shorter at the back compared to the original to allow the lever connector to be placed between the holder and the cable coming in through the back of the nav light. I won’t detail the mirror reflector work since this have been done in a previous post.

Some lanolin was smeared on the housing which allowed the gasket to be “stuck” to the metal and kept it in place whilst the unit was reassembled. You can see the black gasket in the photo above. This assembly was repeated for the starboard side.

When all was done the lights were tested. Here the port light.

Here the starboard.

It’s not so easy to see from these photos but you can quite clearly see the reflection of the bulb in the mirror reflector when viewed from the side showing the the reflector is working as intended.

And to complete the test, here is the stern light which was already converted to an LED bulb and needed no work.

So the navigation lights are now done and that task may be crossed off the list.

By this point I had to stop and retreat inside. Firstly to wash the lanolin off my fingers, even when cold that stuff is sticky, and secondly to warm my fingers up. It’s 9 Celsius outside today according to my weather station but the wind is bitter. I think I was probably only outside for an hour before I started dropping things due to cold fingers.

So…

Time for a cup of tea.

The 1mm thick neoprene sheet arrived a few days ago and now that the main cabin light has been installed, it was time to make the navigation light gaskets.

Having done the major part of the work earlier with thin plywood to get the fit correct, the only thing I needed to do before cutting the gaskets was to find out what settings were required. I made a simple cut about 20mm long close to one edge of the rubber sheet at various powers and speeds until I got a consistent cut and then cut out two copies of the gasket.

As you can see they came out really well. The only downside is the black mess you get on your hands once the cutting has been done. Washes off easy enough but you need to do that before touching anything else !

After that I cut out the bulb holder shims on the laser cutter. This took four or five attempts to get correct as the fit had to be tight but not too tight. Here I have dry fitted the, to the bulb holder to check that they work the way I envisioned. They do, so that is a plus.

There are three parts to the shim, two outer pieces that are the same and an inner piece. The inner piece fits around the holder but into the hole in the brass support. The two outer pieces go around the holder and are as wide as the support. These will be glued together in the brass fitting and the bulb holder will then be pressed into the hole in the middle, so to speak.

Well, that’s the idea. This is the result. I used super glue to glue everything together and it looks to be pretty good. I probably need to put something on the metal to stop it corroding, some thick grease or similar. Lanolin is probably a good idea, I keep some of that on the boat for greasing shackles.

I’m not sure how the positive wire will be connected to the cable from inside the boat. The negative wire isn’t a problem, it will be clipped under one of the mounting screws as the negative from inside is at the moment. There may be enough room behind the bulb for a lever connector, I’ll have to check that out tomorrow.

There’s more work to be done on the nav lights, I have to cut out another reflector, mount both reflectors and the screw the things together with the new gaskets in place. I should be able to do all that tomorrow around making a cheesecake and wrapping presents for the family Christmas Lunch on Saturday.

We’ll see.

Time for a cup of tea.

I took a slightly extended lunch break today to work on Shoal Waters. I had been working on a data migration for a client and had started making mistakes, a sure sign that I needed to take a break. I wasn’t working on live client data, just a local copy so nothing was harmed by the errors, but certainly time for a break.

The first task today was to run the cable for the cabin light. I had to widen the hole through one of the coachroof beams which would have been a problem if I had not bought a bendy extension for the drill some years ago. I crimped two suitable eye connectors to one end of the cable and wired that into the switch box, directly to the bus bars. The cable was run pretty much along the same path as the one I removed yesterday.

With the exception of this bit here. Firstly there are two connectors in the line so that I can run another cable into the front part of the cabin later on. Looks a bit messy right now, but I’ll tidy it up once the other cable is done. Secondly, the cable runs inboard along a different beam.

The light, on its base, screwed to the coachroof and the wires connected.

And let there be light !!

It works, and that is a great relief. It’s been a lot of work to get to this point, but it does mean that working in the cabin after work is now possible although I’ll need to use a mobile light for some things where this light doesn’t reach.

Such as the main fuse.

Today’s parts delivery included these items excluding the brass holder. Two are replacement bulb holders one of which is too big to fit in the hole in the holder and the other is too small. The too big one will be put into the parts bin, just in case I find a use for it somewhere else, the one that is too small will be made to fit by making some sort of collar. But that’s a task for another time.

Right now, I am talking about the main fuse and that is what that large chunk of plastic, labelled GLOSSO, is, a 10A circuit breaker. This will be placed in the battery box in the positive wire. If anything shorts out somewhere in the rest of the wiring, this will protect the boat from damage, such as catching fire due to a short causing excess heat.

Still, the battery box is small and cramped and the light from the new cabin light doesn’t reach inside, so a torch will be necessary to screw this fuse into the box.

That’s next.

And there we are, main circuit breaker wired in and fixed to the side of the battery box.

I think that completes the first stage of the rewiring. The second stage will be the light in the fore-cabin and the third stage will be the fixing of the solar panel once the coachroof has been sanded, epoxied and painted.

Time for a cup of tea.

Unfortunately, the parts I need to finish the installation of the cabin light didn’t arrive until after dark, so that is put off for a day. I did manage to get some work done, just not everything I wanted.

This is the original cabin light switch. It is very mucky as you can see.

And the terminals on the inside are a bit corroded, but it still works. I don’t know whether to be surprised at that or not. Still, it works, so it will be reused although not without a fuse in the circuit, just in case.

This is the reason why you don’t put cable clips into wood with steel pins in a marine environment. Some of the pins have completely wasted away in the wood and others have split the clips.

This one is partially wasted and it split the clip.

The cable was also disintegrating, as I pulled it out of the clips my hands became sticky with decomposed plastic and the cable broke open in places exposing the copper wire inside. I suspect that the cable was pre-1977 since it had red and black interior cables. Still, it will be replaced with newer cable.

I also drilled the holes in the cabin top for the light base screws.

These bronze screws are screwed in from the outside…

… and into the light base on the inside, suitably cut down such that they do not protrude through the base.

I had to remove the polystyrene tiles in that section before doing this. I don’t know what Charles used to glue the tiles to the boat but it is really tough. So far the wood under the tiles ss still good although the paint is coming off in a few places. Eventually the underside of the cabin top will need to be repainted, but that might not happen in this cycle. The aim is to get Shoal Waters back in the water for next season and that will mean not doing some of the tasks that are not necessary.

Still, things are progressing. The marine plywood from Robins Timber was delivered yesterday afternoon, four sheets of 6mm and two sheets of 4mm all full sheets of 2500mm x 1220mm. Most of that is for the new, lightweight dinghy that also needs to be built before Shoal Waters is put back in the water unless her mooring is one close enough to the shore to be able to walk through the mud to board. Hopefully this will be the case. The dinghy will then be used for getting to the boat when she is afloat and also using it as a sled when transferring heavy items to the boat. Simply put them in the dinghy and push it across the mud.

Time for a cup of tea.

Having found yesterday afternoon that the light faded too fast after work to get anything significant done inside the cabin without interior lights, which I haven’t installed yet, I did some work during my lunch break.

I ran the white cable for the solar panel and clipped it into place. Since the black cables are very stiff I think I’ll not bother to cut them any shorter than they are now, they will not go round a much tighter bend than you see in the photo, and use the cable clips to hold them against the upstand pretty much where they are now. I have some clips that open and close and I may try to use these for the black cables since I’ll need to take the solar panel off periodically and using the nail-on style of clip is not suited to that type of use. The disadvantage of the reusable clips is that the stick on rather than screw on and that might not be a good solution here. I’ll have to see if I can screw them in place anyway.

Some time later…

Well, the answer to that question is yes, I can. The double-sided tape on the clips held them in place and then I could screw them to the upstand without having to try and hold them in the correct position at the same time as trying to screw them in.

Mind you, I did have to drill a suitable hole in the bottom of the groove in which the cable runs, but that was not difficult using new, sharp bits and a drill running at a slow speed.

These are the clips I used. they are called Chfeila clips and I bought them from Amazon I have used them in a couple of places in the workshop now and find them very good. They seem to stick quite well in the dry workshop, but I wasn’t sure that they would in a marine environment, hence the screws. I used bronze screws for the job and that seems to have worked well. I’ll be using these again. One place where it is exceedingly hard to hammer in the normal cable clips is under the bridge deck and I’ll be able to use these for the compass light cable which I have removed.

The next task is to mount the first main cabin light. This will be sited in the centre of the cabin top width-wise and just forward of the companionway. The issue here is that there is a narrow beam running fore and aft, so the light will have to be offset slightly otherise the light and heads will meet in the middle !!!

I’ll need to make a base that will allow the light to be screwed to the underside of the coachroof..

So, armed with light and calipers, I made various measurement and then drew out the required parts on the CAD program.

The drawing for this simple shape takes less than ten minutes to create and once that has been imported into the CAM software and the code for the CNC Router done, another ten minutes, I’m ready to cut.

I’ve cut this out from 9.5mm thick Baltic Birch plywood on the CNC Router, around fifteen minutes to set up and cut out. I do like these CNC tools, they save so much time. Now I’ll be able to install the first light in the cabin, probably tomorrow. The two outer holes are for the screws holding the base to the cabin top which will be screwed in from outside, and the inner two are for the screws holding the light to the base.

If all goes well I should have light in the cabin sometime tomorrow.

Time for a cup of tea.

One of the things I say frequently enough to make my wife roll her eyes is that it’s good to have the right tools for a job. Yes, I can do things without the correct tools, well, some of the time, but other times I can not.

Take this beastie, for example. It’s the winding head of a rope maker Under normal circumstances not only would I have not made this, but I would not even thought about making one. My carpentry skills are just not good enough to make the gears.

However, I have a CNC Router and I started doing mechanical drawings back in Grammar School, although back then it was called Technical Drawing or TD for short. I’ve been using CAD drawing packages pretty much since they first came out for personal computers. So it was an easy job to draw up the plans for one, use a CAM package to create the g-code for the CNC Router and away I went.

Well, the same thing happened to me again whilst I was trying to replace the bulb in the port side nav light.

This light had a gasket, unlike the starboard one which had sealant, and the observant among you may have noticed that this has been cut out of a bicycle inner tube. A pretty good idea, but rough. Not that I could do any better with a sharp knife and a pair of scissors, I hasten to add, but I also have a Laser Engraver/Cutter and figured that using this I could do much better.

I took off the light housing, drew around it on a sheet of paper, photographed it and loaded the image into my CAD program. Using the various drawing tools I created the drawing.

This was exported to the CAM software and thence to the laser cutter. I used a piece of thin plywood to cut out a test piece as the gasket material I ordered will not arrive until tomorrow.

This is the first attempt which is pretty close. The outer edge, the holes and the two vertical straight line are spot on, but the thickness of the upper and lower parts are too thin. Looking back at my measurement I noticed that I’d messed them up.

After revising the drawing this was the second test piece.

This one fits perfectly. When the neoprene arrives I’ll be able to cut out two gaskets for the nav lights that I know will fit and the really good thing is that if I ever need to replace them, I already have the drawing, ready to go and tested.

Time for a cup of tea.

The task for today was to connect the solar panel to the controller and check that it works as expected.

It didn’t take long do and it looks very rough, but it’s very temporary, so how it looks right now isn’t that important.

On the inside the controller is indicating that the solar panel is connected and is providing power to charge the battery, even in the Hay Barn. This has a clear perspex roof so light can get in but it is not in the direct sunlight so the fact that it is still charging the battery is very good news.

The problem with the solar panel is that the cables are very stiff. I took the top off the connected housing to see if the cables could be replaced but the housing was filled with a potting compound so that is out.

I did have to screw the panel down as without some sort of fixing, the panel would easily blow around in the wind. These screws are in the right place for the final fixing, but not the proper screws just yet.

The panel takes up all the port side of the cabin top but that’s not a problem, it doesn’t get in the way of anything important.

After lunch the next lot of parts arrived and I was able to continue the work.

Two clamps for the battery, some 7mm cable clips and some brass 15mm pins.

Firstly the battery. Looks much better now even if it is a bit over the top. These things are able to take hundreds of Amps for very brief periods of time and are rated at 100A continuous. I doubt that Shoal Waters will draw more than 10A maximum.

Next up is to secure the cables. Not many clips are required here but they will stop the cables from moving around. I remove the steel pins from the clips and substitute the brass ones instead.

The steel rusts easily, stains the wood and tends to split the clips. Here several clips were removed, damaging the wood a little in the process.

These are some of the steel pins that were taken out. Two are rusted enough to have split the cable clip and the over two just suffered a little surface rust.

Here’s a closer look at the new clip with the brass pin. All of the replacement and new clips will be done this way.

I still had enough light to continue working inside the cabin so I pressed on. The side entry, low-profile deck glands were next. That’s a real mouthful, but accurately describes the items. These are only put in place lightly as paint and epoxy will need to be done before these are screwed down properly, but it keeps the cables neat on the outside and also will allow me to make a couple of bearing blocks that will stop the headsail furling lines from rubbing on the deck glands and the solar panel.

Mind you, this cause a heck of a mess inside. The underside of the cabin top has been lined with polystyrene tiles and then a layer of insulating tiles on top of that. Unfortunately, this all has to come down so that I can inspect the surface of the wood and also to put in the backing blocks for the various screws that will protrude through into the cabin otherwise.

Some of the screws may be seen in the above photo, the black one is temporary but the one that will replace it needs a backing block, even so.

I took the time to sweep up the mess as I’m finished for the day. You can’t really tell from the photo but in the cabin the light is getting a little too dim to allow me to continue working. If the lights were working then it would be a different proposition, but those are next to be installed. Having said that, it’s less than a month to go before the Winter Solstice is upon us and the daylight ours will begin to increase again.

The cabling on the inside has become messy again due to the cables for the solar panel now being on the inside, but with that done and the battery cable sorted out, I can run the battery cable and clip it into place followed by the solar panel cables. Although the panel will be removed and replaced at least once during the refurbishment, the cables will be clipped into place in such a way that they may be removed if required. But that’s a job for another day, possibly tomorrow if it’s light enough in the cabin after I knock off for the day.

Time for a cup of tea.

The minimum task I set myself on this cold and wet Saturday was to get the battery hooked up to the controller and the controller wired up to the bus bars in the switch box. Anything after that would be a bonus.

So, starting with the battery cable. I cut off the old ends of the cable, then stripped the individual cores and put on these ferrules using the kit that I bought when constructing my CNC Router.

These fit nicely into the controller connector and I repeated the process with a short length of cable with ferrules on one end and eyes on the other to connect the controller to the bus bars and a similar cable from the bus bars to the USB charging hubs, although this had eyes on the bus bar end and bare, tinned wire at the other to fit into the lever connectors.

Here is the result with the battery connected. Already past the minimum task and time to break for lunch. As the USB charging hub has a switch built in, the cable from there ran directly to the bus bars as you can see from the photo.

After lunch I turned my attention to the switch box, starting by covering as much of the bare wires on the back of the switch panel with heat-shrink sleeving. Being careful not to get the hot air gun too close to the acrylic panel, of course. For the moment I’ll only be using one of the switches, the one for the navigation lights.

Using a combination of lever connectors, eyes and a spade connector, the cables to the navigation lights were connected to the bus bars and the switch.

This is the result with the switch panel screwed back to the box. Fairly neat and tidy, but I’ll be securing the cables a little better once the cable clips and brass nails arrive, hopefully tomorrow.

So, did it work? Well, two of the three navigation lights turned on when the switch was thrown, the other didn’t have a bulb installed. That was an easy job to fix but even with the bulb in place, the nav light didn’t illuminate. On closer inspection I found that the bulb holder had broken some time in the past and had been glued back together with epoxy. This also meant that the centre pin in the holder that should have connected to the bulb no longer moved and was stuck in the fully retracted position, meaning that it didn’t touch the bulb.

Not to worry, thought I, I’ll just order a new one.

Only I seems that you can’t get them any more, which might explain why the broken one was glued together.

What I need is a brass bulb holder for a BA15S bulb that is threaded on the outside of the body and had screw rings. I can find ones for BA15D and lots for BA22 bulbs, but not for the BA15S.

So, I have ordered the best ones I can find and I’ll figure out how to mount them once they arrive.

Currently, the ship’s battery is out in the cockpit since I need to get into the battery box when replacing the centreplate case and I needed the cable to be long enough to do this. But I must replace those awful crocodile clips! More things to order.

Time for a cup of tea.

Between some Christmas shopping, making bread and darkness setting in I managed to get in a couple of hours work on the wiring. The task for this afternoon was the (re)installation of the switch boxes and controllers so that the wiring itself may begin.

This involved a lot of getting into and out of the boat and repeated trips to the workshop for various tools, screws and wot-not. I won’t bore you with too many details except to say that I had to juggle the rack on the outside that was screwed on from the inside and the switch boxes and controller that were fixed to the inside but screwed on from the outside. Needless to say, it was important that the various screws didn’t end up under one or other of the items.

This is the result. The new wiring will utilise what I believe are known as lever connectors.

They look like this and I have some inline single connectors as well and for my purposes, they have two main advantages over the normal connector blocks. You don’t need a screwdriver to use them and they don’t rust.

The connector blocks have steel screws to hold the wires and these have a tendency to rust in a marine environment.

The lever blocks do not use screws but a nickle-plated spring on the inside of the connector that is opened by lifting the lever. They can take up to 32A and this is more than sufficient for Shoal Waters.

I will be able to proceed with the wiring and although I’ll be wiring in the solar panel, this will be temporary as the coachroof needs to be dealt with and repainted before the panel is securely fixed in place.

So, the next tasks are to wire in the battery, making sure that there is enough cable to place the battery outside the cabin, wire the controller output to the switchbox, wire in the solar panel and then check that the panel is charging the battery.

But that’s for another day.

Time for a cup of tea.