Steering cabin Hull Repairs

                                 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