Day 243 - Tug and pull

Tonight started out with a little testing. It occurred to me that the 1" PVC that was going to be installed from side to side between the battery bays might not be big enough with the three runs of wire and a piece of 5/16" fule line. And sure enough, it's not. So set that aside and I'll come back to it tomorrow.

Then it was time for more assembly in the wiring area. The trick to pulling things through a conduit is to pull the biggest thing first and then pull the smaller stuff. Well, in this case the biggest thing was the engine harness, the next was the cable for the sonar so that got pulled tonight.

Turns out it's only a little long (about six inches :-) which is handy as I don't have to deal with any excess. I installed the Lowrance chartplotter, hooked up that cable and then hooked up the power cable. I can't terminate the power feeds as I'm waiting for more connectors. Also discovered that my $1100 chartplotter doesn't come with the appropriate cables to hook it up to an NMEA 2000 network (the latest way to interconnect marine devices) so I'll have to buy the parts. Dirty rotten cheap buggers. Makes me mad.

After installing the protector that should help keep the water out of the large hole in the transom well for the cables to the engine I mounted the transducer. I get to uninstall it to seal the holes, but that won't take long.

I went back up front and did some more sorting on the wiring. I think I've done a pretty good job of organizing the wire runs and I don't think there will be much extra from any of the factory cables that will need to be dealt with. There are three; the outside air temp cable (which got hooked up tonight), the lanyard emergency stop switch, and the trim cable that will be long, but I can coil that wire up and hide it in the shifter/throttle area instead of the main wiring area.

It looks a little messy, but as connections are made, and wiring bundled, it keeps getting better.

The last set of stuff to be pulled from the back to the front is turning out to be a big pain. The tubing for the hydraulic steering is a very stiff plastic, and as it came coiled up, it really wants to stay that way. I tried to pull both tubes plus two 16 gauge wires and I couldn't quite finish. It's hung up at the last bend and I think I'm going to either need help to get it through, or I may have to pull them individually. I'd rather not do that as that's likely to be even more difficult, but we'll see.

I finished the night with some painting. It was so late that I sanded the outside of the transom well and gave it a coat of white, applied the last coat inside the cabin fuel area, rolled a few places in the cabin that needed some touch-up and the two loose pieces. Didn't do the windows as I touched up in the area I need to work in to paint the windows. Oops. :-)

4 Hours

Day 242 - The big stuff

Tonight was spent terminating the big (6AWG) power cables at the back of the boat. I'm running a Blue Seas Add-A-Battery system which, as I count it, means I made up 22 connections.

Each of the connectors is about the size of the end of your pinky and you don't use no wimpy tool to crimp those! I borrowed ours from work tonight.

That's the two handled crimp tool in the picture, it's cast iron and weighs about ten pounds. After stripping the insulation from the wire, a connector was slipped over the end, crimped twice and then heat shrink tubing with adhesive inside was shrunk with the heat gun to protect the connection. It takes about 10 minutes to do each connector.

There were the two connections at the front and all the rest were in the back. There will definitely be some cable management to be done to keep things neat.

Two more holes were drilled tonight, one in the side of each battery bay underneath the transom well. A piece of 1" PVC will run between the holes for a conduit for the power cables and the fuel line from the fuel filter. Those holes were painted with BilgeKote tonight, the PVC will be installed tomorrow night.

Painting finished the night; front windows, transom well inside and out, and the two loose pieces.

Oh, and my motor is almost here. I'm really hoping that the barge company will deliver it next Tuesday and I can get it installed and rigged the same day. We'll see!

4.5 Hours

Day 241 - Termination

Major wiring began today. After spending some time cleaning up around the outside of the side windows (which still needs more work) I got down to the wiring.

The switches were installed in the panel.

There are more than I need, but they're kind of a pain to install so it's best to do them now. The empty hole top right will be for a push button if I install a horn.

Then it was around to the back side.

It looks a bit of a mess right now, but it'll clean up as I start to bundle wires. Essentially what you see right now is: the switch panel upper left, the gauge upper right, the vertical strip in the middle is for the nav lights (one power and ground in, port, starboard and stern out), the fuse block is center bottom, wires for all the lights are coming in from the middle left, that yellow wire is part of the cabling coming from the shifter/throttle, the black wires coming up from the middle bottom are ground wires to the fuel tanks and the big thick one wrapping up over the bottom edge is from the engine. What's not in the picture is the main power wire. That will get terminated tomorrow as I'm borrowing a very large crimp tool from work for those connectors.

No painting tonight as I wasn't paying any attention to the time and when I did look it was 10pm. Oops. :-)

3.5 Hours

Day 240 - Flame on!

Two focuses for tonight, finishing up the side windows and painting.

A stop was made by Home Depot to find knobs to put on the windows. I looked at a bunch of them, but the right one jumped out when I saw it, a ball shape with one side cut off. That will make for an easy thing to grab from any angle, but more importantly provides a large surface area against the lexan.

Each set of windows was taken out and marked for the placement of the knobs. Running the drill at a slow speed the oversize holes were drilled with minimal pressure. Then the protective plastic was removed and the edges flame smoothed.

That process involves firing up the propane torch and carefully guiding the flame along the edge of the lexan, smoothing the sharp edges and allowing the plastic to soften and reharden, hopefully eliminating any high-stress areas at the edge of the lexan created by the cutting with the table saw. The holes that were drilled also got this treatment.

Here's a before and after picture.

As each set of windows was reinstalled, flat toothpicks were used to raise the lower track. After all the windows were installed I went around the outside edge of each windows and squeezed in 3M 4200 into any remaining cracks or gaps. Then the toothpicks were removed and in each window both panes were slid over the joint in the track to keep it lined up.

Each pane had its knob installed by putting a small amount of silicone around the hole on the outside, a little silicone on the base of the knob and a screw through the hole into the knob pulling it up against the lexan.

I really like these!

More painting was next. The inside of the front windows got their first coat of white.

The area under the rear admirals seat got a coat after pulling the screw used to clamp the bracket to the rear cabin wall.

And the rear transom well area got its coat.

The inside of the transom well will get its final coat of BilgKote last so I can put down a tape line.

And finally the last two loose pieces got a first coat on one side and the edges.

Tomorrow I'll clean up the outside of the windows and fill the gaps and cracks on the inside. More painting of course and wiring.

3.5 Hours

Day 239 - Blue windows

Another hot day, and probably the last for a while. A good thing as I had the fans in the doorway running full blast and it never dropped below 85 degrees all day. Way too hot for me!

Good progress today.

First up was cutting what will probably be about the last pieces of wood (still a table/bunk to do). I remade the bottom of the captains seat as I have enough room up there to allow for the full 18" depth. The divider between the storage space and the fuel hoses under the rear admirals' seat was also cut. Both got their edges and one side primed.

All the excess silicone was trimmed out around the front windows and everything up there that needed priming got it.

At the rear of the boat, all the pinholes and tiny indentations were filled with spackle and the transom well got its second coat of BilgeKote. One more coat and that's done.

Then I went to work on the windows. I've been carrying around the lexan in the back seat of my truck for weeks and it was time to do something with it. I had saved one set of cut-outs from the windows just for use as templates and they got put to use today. I laid them out on the 1/4" plywood from yesterday, traced and then cut them. Each set was test fitted and trimmed where necessary and then tested on the other side. Here's the front set of patterns.

And the rear set.

Then it was on to the messy, painful work of cutting the lexan. Much research had been done as it's very possible to shatter lexan while cutting and the most common way of doing it was to buy a very high tooth-count table saw blade and install it backwards. That way you're not chipping your way through the plastic. The downside to cutting lexan on the table saw is that it makes lots of very hard, very sharp and very hot blobs of plastic that when they get flung off the blade and hit you really hurt! I was wearing safety glasses and the breathing mask, but besides all the pieces impacting my stomach, chest and arms, every once in a while I'd get a really nasty piece right in the face. You don't get to flinch when you're freehanding material through the table saw, all you can do is grit your teeth and bear it.

Here's the end result.

Yep, they're blue. Because the safety film hasn't been removed. I'll do that when I'm ready to flame the edges (to smooth them out) and 3M 4200 the lower window strip.

The saw blade really took a pounding and there's lots of plastic still stuck to the sides.

The wood pieces from earlier today got flipped and their other side primered.

Then all the little scrap wood stuff was taken out and thrown in the truck, hauled down to the beach and one of the last bonfires done. Probably one more bonfire to go when all is said and done.

This project is getting close. A little more painting, a little bit of work to do on the windows, wiring and engine mounting and rigging and she'll be done.

The end is in sight! I might just make it before the 4th of July which would be cool. It'd be a great way to celebrate by watching the fireworks from the boat.

8 Hours

Day 238 - Hot, hot, hot!

Y'all from the South might laugh, but it's been in the eighties the past couple days and that's hot! for us. It's affected the boat building too.

After getting started late because of work, work was resumed in the transom well. Sanding was done to smooth it out, another coat of epoxy to fill the weave and drain holes were drilled in the lower corners. The extra epoxy was turned into peanut butter to fill the gaps on the front side and then everything was left alone to cure.

The transom light was screwed to it's mounting board and then 3M 5200 was used to stick it in place. The blue tape is keeping it aligned while the adhesive sets.

Up next was the throttle/shifter. Many parts and pieces later (and yes! I read the manual) it was installed in the face plate and the face plate was mounted. This will come apart later when the control cables are installed.

After avoiding working on the front windows for the past couple weeks I decided it was time to just do it. I completely don't know why doing these scares me, but every time I finish one I have to mentally whack myself as they're really easy.

The install process was a little different on these. Because there's no way to get a razor blade in there to cut out the squeeze out I had to scrape it out. I left the squeeze out on the glass side because it actually helps hold the wood strip in place while the silicone sets up. You can see in the first picture where I had to use blue tape to keep the strip from sliding away.

By this time it was so hot in the shed, even with the fans running full bore in the doorway, that I had to get out. So I went to Home Depot and bought a sheet of 1/4" plywood that I had them rip in quarters. I'll use these to make patterns for the side windows. It's much cheaper to screw up a $6 piece of wood than a $65 sheet of lexan!

After returning from errands I discovered that the epoxy from this afternoon had almost fully hardened (told you it was hot!) so painting was back on the plate. After doing a final touch test and smoothing some bumps and spikes with the rasp, I cut a three inch hole in the side for running cables through and then painted the inside of the transom well with BilgeKote.

The BilgeKote was painted inside the drain holes and the side hole too.

Primer was painted on the back, edges and underneath.

And another sign of the project winding down; the stairs I've been using for months to climb in and out of the transom cut-out were disassembled.

With that I called it a night after a very long day.

6 Hours

Day 237 - Filling the back hole

Well, the big project for tonight was the installation of the transom well. It turned out the the side panels for the transom well weren't quite square. Pretty close, but not perfect. But because the two panels that made up the bottom and front were square, with a couple clamps, some screws and washers, and a little elbow grease, everything lines up nicely.

Rolled epoxy all around the insides, put fillets in all the corners, a strip of fiberglass in all the corners and a sheet of fiberglass in the bottom and it looks pretty good.

But all that white needs to be filled in, so with some more epoxy and some vigorous rolling with a roller we end up with this.

Dang that looks good! Only took me eight months to figure out how to do it this well.

And here's a close up showing the weave.

Oh, and for a little bit of fancy, the top of the front panel has a nice curve in it. I had cut the panel tall just for just this reason. A nail at the top center and one on either side at the side panel level, a quick curve with my piece of PVC and some work with the jigsaw and it looks pretty good!

The only thing I wish I'd done was make the height of the sides match the height of the shelves, but oh well, a little late to change that now. :-)

And of course, with no longer being able to climb up through the transom, alternate arrangements had to be made.

The ladder works, but I'm glad I waited this long to do this project.

Another coat of white was put on the ceiling of both the cuddy and the cabin. Both will eventually get headliner, but until then I just can't stand to look at the half-painted look. Some other pieces got painted as well.

The fixture for the fuel selector valve was 5200'd to the rear cabin wall. More painting there obviously, but the painting is starting to wind down.

Will get a late start tomorrow as I have to work in the morning. Flying by helicopter out to Cape Spencer to work on a cell site.

3 Hours

Day 236 - Wiring away

No pictures tonight, phone went dead! Pictures added!

So tonight was a wiring and light install night. The port and starboard navigation lights on their blocks were siliconed to the side.

I then spent almost an hour fishing pull strings across the forward header. In the end I had to make the hole on the port end larger and drill a hole in the bottom, right in the middle because I got the fish tape stuck between the inside wood and the vertical pipe to the roof. :-( Big Ding Dang Durn It.

Wire was pulled for the two nav lights, the port side light, stern light, galley light and captains' light, and all the wires labeled. The wire for the nav lights was spliced together. The port, galley and captains light fixtures were screwed to their round mounting plates to get the screws in place, then the screws were removed and each plate had a ring of silicone applied and a single screw put in the center to hold it to the ceiling. The lights were spliced to their respective wires and screwed in place.

I'm using little plastic wire retaining mounts that are screwed to the ceiling and then a zip tie holds the wire in place. All of those were done for the port side light. I'll get the galley and captains lights tomorrow.

Since I haven't finished painting the mounting plate for the stern light, that wire is looped through the roof handholds to keep it out of the way for now.

The outside temperature sensor was mounted in place with a small amount of silicone to back up the rubber gasket.

The ignition key was installed. I didn't make vroom, vroom, noises, but I have to admit to turning the key a few times in anticipation. :-)

The gauge was installed. I have a suspicion I'm going to have to change how I have it mounted. It's well below the sight line and unless it has a god angle of view, it may be to low to see.

On the way out, more painting as usual. Another coat on the bottom of the counter top, back side of the shifter/throttle and the bottom of the transom well.

Worked late tonight.

4 Hours