Sanding, sanding, sanding... and then sticking, sticking.

Frames for the main hatch.

Rigging up to hoist the cabinets. 

For the past weeks I have been sanding down lacquered panels to give the glue somewhere to stick, and sanding down new panels. Now some are going in, and more will be fitted in the coming week.

I made frames for the main hatch, with cross-bars for handholds. These were made, ruined, re-made, routed, sanded, and finally glued in place with Sika. They seem firmly in place and I trust they are not going to go anywhere.

The offending panel in the main cabin was stripped, and a new one made, Surprisingly it came out well, the holes just needed a little re-drilling.

Security detail: where are these from?

The Health and Safety geese at the building site
were not impressed. 

I also began to prepare for fixing the cabinets in the forward cabin, first hoisting them on board, then measuring them, tracing where they should go, and installing brass inserts for the bolts. These are left-overs from my late father-in-law's defunct furniture factory. After 50 years in storage they had to be turned down, and hopefully will go to sea as he dreamed of doing.

Delicate dismantling of a badly made panel:
machete and number one persuading tool

Gluing the screwing blocks. Dozens of them

Bolting in the brass inserts

The finishing washers I had to have smuggled in from the UK were installed in a few places. They are just not available here, and are cheap enough, but the supplier would not deliver in South Africa. Now all the visible bolt heads have to be finished like these, and I will finish the wiring and installing the lights at the same time.

Finishing washers make the countersunk bolts lookbetter

I also continued gluing screwing blocks along the inside of the hull, to hold the covering planks, and hide the insulation. As in the past, high technology does not scare us: CAD is the order of the day. You can see the cardboard panels that will become plywood covering poanels - Cardboard Aided Design.

And after months of working, buying bits and pieces, using some, working, buying more, there was a need for sorting out the bolts into different lengths, nuts into regular and Nylock, and so on.

Hopefully I will have some more hands helping me in the coming weeks. But the dogs and geese at the building site are always there with a demand for attention, and sometimes a hissing comment.

Sorting the bolts, nuts, washers. 

Making cardboard mock-ups of the panels that
will cover the hull. Screwing blocks in evidence