Saturday 25 October 2014

Well thought I would fill in another hole in the deck, ie. the hole just forward of the main hatch. It had a horrid plastic mushroom vent that was brittle and didn't take much effort to remove.  I have this lovely brass mushroom vent...




However, it needed a wooden Surround to mount it on and a similar piece of wood to finish it off inside.  I found a nice bit of teak and set about cutting out a circle with a hole to fit the mushroom vent.  Having a small lathe I decided to turn the wood and these are a few pics of me doing this.  I firstly made a disc the diameter I wanted then when happy with that. Started to cut the hole.  Had to be careful to tuen off the lathe once I had broken through.






 Result looks pretty good I think.  Now to fit it to the boat.



Pic of vent closed and open with teak base.






I was having second thoughts and thought maybe I should buy one of those solar powered vents and sell the bronze one to cover the cost.  What does anyone think?  The mushroom vent is fine but if I forget to close it and get one over the top I will get water below.  Whereas the solar vents allow air but no water to vent the cabin.  I would have liked one of the low profile cowl. Vents but they seem to be very expensive.

I have a smaller mushroom vent that I might fit on the stern to vent the rear lockers.


Wednesday 1 October 2014

Well, progress albeit slow...here are some more pics with the bolts in temporarily and the perspex.  Now to decide if I put the dome nuts inside as first thought or outside.  Any thoughts anyone?  I think the hex head bolts on the outside would look cleaner.





This last picture shows the perspex bedded into the inner frame and the outer is bolted on simply to hold the perspex in place whilst the Sikaflex goes off.  I will remove the outer frame and then bed this in separately and putting the bolts in one final time.  The bolts will be finger tight until the Sikaflex cures then tightened up.  Hoping this gives me a strong water tight seal and also look good.  Then it will be on with the Starboard side.