Saturday, April 11, 2009

Starting to Look Like a Boatshop

With enough room, is there ever enough?, and a plan, I can visualize this place getting organized! Just to the left of the nutshell pram is my shelving setup for the dismantling of the boat. Each shelf has a different section of the boat (e.g. bottom - port main cabin, second - starboard main cabin, third - bow section). Yes, that is where I am at with progress getting to the bare hull. Head and lockers next.

Under the pram - drying douglas fir, over - all the rigging. Heading back from the pram will be all the wood in the garage to get that cleaned out so wiring can be finished, insulated and than sheathed. Upstairs in the loft I plan to have a small office and than a finishing room for all the varnishing that no doubt will follow.

As you can see, there is a nice set of stairs up to the boat from the garage as well as down to the boatshop floor. After taking a dive Friday stepping off the deck unto a two foot step ladder and having the ladder kick out and hitting the ground, the steps moved up in priority.

I also have a few more tools like the cyclone dust collection and a bandsaw. The dust collector is a little high to get a straight run of the ducts above the ceiling rafters. Next step is ducting to the various tools and then there will be no excuse for a dusty shop. I also have ample counter shop space with a 4' x 8' outfeed table/bench for the table saw as well as along the wall. My plan is to have the storage under the cabinets on rollers to be able to move them about to where I'm working. They will also be catagorized by type: Epoxy stuff, chisels, planes, sharpening, ...








Ballast is Free!!!

Today marked a milestone, at least for me, with the freeing of the ballast. I resorted to grinding the three remaining bolt heads in the area of the head. After lowering the cradle a half inch and a couple of pounds on the bolts, she let go. Then a lot of slow cautious incremental steps yielded a free ballast.