Steering cabin hull repairs
It was noticed before the installation of the actual teak
deck could start that there were a few pieces of wood of the forward cabin, aft
cabin and the steering hut had rotten wood where it is connected to the deck.
The main challenges were port side from the front cabin
window to the aft side of the aft cabin, starboard side front part of where the
side window meets the front window and a small part starboard side aft cabin
corner of the window.
On portside instead of replacing small parts of the wood it
was decided to remove complete the first plank of the deck house from the front
cabin aft window to the end of the aft cabin port side.
Although difficult to see from the next picture earlier repairs were made with some kind of epoxy with wood chips this needed complete to be removed as well.
Before the plank was removed supports were place inside of
the cabin to keep the deck house in the same and correct position, it is important
to spent quite some time installing these supports otherwise the windows will
not close properly anymore.
The new to be installed plank was then placed in position, 5
meter/ 15 foot long although one would expect that this would be a straight
forward installation it took quite a long time to get the plank fitted
properly.
The reason for this is that not only the deck is placed in
an angle compared to the deck house but also the deck is not completely plat
over 5 meter length and runs in a small curve.
When all fitted well and the plank was in place the position
of the aft cabin windows was marked on the plank, plank removed again and the
necessary wood was cut out.
The next step was to fabricate the vertical aft window frame,
and connect this to the horizontal lower window plank, new, and the horizontal
top window frame old and still in place.
Same challenges with this piece of wood the horizontal plank
should be properly fitted in place due to the angle between the deck and the
deck house.
Original construction was used for installing this piece of
window frame vertical window part had two wooden pegs with fitted in the
original top window frame and in the new bottom window frame.
First the wooden pegs were cut out of the extra wood of the
vertical window frame next step was to cut out a hole in the horizontal new
window frame, first small holes were drilled next step larger holes were
drilled and then the rest of the wood was removed with a chisel and hammer till
all fitted correctly.
Than the complete plank was glued with colored epoxy glue in
place while at the same time the vertical window frame was glued in place as
well. This needed to be done otherwise it is impossible to get this vertical
window frame fitted.
To make sure that the still installed plank of the deck
house would like up with the new to be installed plank wooden pegs were
installed in a groove in both planks.
These grooves were made with a specific tool designed for these
purpose unfortunately I forgot to make pictures of this type of installation. On
the inside of the cabin the new plank was kept in place with small blocks of
wood screwed to the new plank and to the deck support beam, both should line
up.
With the new plank fitted the actual window frame needed to
be worked on to be able to fit the actual windows.
Window frame were kept smaller than actually needed, few mm
and sanded down to the correct seize to be able to fit the windows.
First the windows were placed in front of the wood, markings
were made windows removed and with a router the actual groove was made to fit
the actual window in place.
When everything fitted correctly the window frame groove was
coated with thin epoxy to protect the wood from water for the future.
Last picture shows the finished installation of the window
frame with the plank screwed in place to the inside beams and holed plugged.
Next larger window frame repair was the starboard side front
cabin window frame.
Portside window frame in the same position is still in good
condition.
As can be seen from the following pictures there is quite an
amount of rotten wood on both horizontal and vertical frames.
The window frame was cut away until good solid wood was
found and a new frame was made.
The vertical window frame from the front windows will be
replaced in a later stage but was needed to get the correct angle of
installation of the vertical window frame of the side window.
Since the window frame of the transversal front windows was
disconnected from the deck it had moved slightly in the direction of the aft
ship. As can be seen from the next picture the front window moved in the aft
ship direction after removal of the vertical side window frame.
This had as a result that the first vertical window frame
although fitted well did not look very good it was tapered. Also due to the
rotten wood it was not possible to take good measurements of the removed wood.
In short a new part of the window frame was made and
installed in the same way as the aft vertical window frame was fabricated.
As can be seen from some of the last pictures some teak has
been installed.
The teak deck installation will be the next blog when the
complete teak deck installation is finished.
Unfortunately at this time the weather is not in favor for
completing the installation of the teak deck lots of rainy days
