Ok, got the shaft…

and the welding is done for now. Scott came down on Wednesday, and finished cutting the section out of the monster tube, and then trimmed the bearers, put in the notch and finish welded the box.

Thursday morning I crawled out of the sack, had a cuppa joe and hopped into the truck for an amusing ride into the hinterland. 210 kilometers one way, with the morning rush across the top of Toronto not being too too bad. 30 minutes from one side to the other, and then smooth sailing all the way to the town of Woodview.  30 minutes to get the shaft, pay the bill, fork over another $7 and change for a brass key, and off I went. Gassed up on the way back, and paid 9 cents a liter less than they rape us for in the big city.

Coming home again was the pits, hit the rush hour at its start and took 1 hour and a bit to make it back to my neck of the woods. However, I did get to Princess Auto and returned the large cylinder hone which I finally got to check. Too big. As luck would have it they had the smaller one in stock.  I picked that up plus some air hose fitting so I can get my compressor running and give the scaler a try. Next task: hone out the propeller bearing tube so the cutlass can be installed, and start scaling the inside 4 bays around the engine so I can epoxy it to hell n gone.

I’m still debating the sea chest idea. Best get it figured out soon. I also need to get the depthsounder transducer mounted along with the sumlog impeller. And the endless amounts of rust on the outside of the hull.  I got going on the DS fairing on Wednesday, while waiting for Scott to arrive.  I expect I’ll have it shaped and ready to epoxy by the time my next off cycle starts on Tuesday. (Damn I love 4 day weekends! )

I spoke to the other fellow who is stuck on dry land, he’s completely bummed out and figures on selling his boat once it’s in the water, but isn’t in any great hurry to launch so the timing is in my hands. Can’t complain about that, works for me.

The weather is acting nutty again, Very cool at night, then it hit 30C today with the humidex up to 36C.  To that end, given the piss poor performance of the air conditioner I used last year, I broke down and bought an 11,000 BTU stand alone which I can install inside and run an exhaust house out one of the ports. With that I’ll cease melting like the Wicked Witch and get some work done. I’ve picked up a mess of angle iron. I will be replacing all the 2×4 floor beams,  but I won’t start that until after launch.

Finally, some photos….

Got down there yesterday for an hour or so, and removed the winter cover frame. Its now laying in disorder on the coach roof. But the main reason was to take some photos.

Here’s SD sitting almost alone on the hard, looking kinda forlorn. You can see the engine hoist frame sticking up out of the cockpit, the main sheet leading down to the wave breaker. The chain hoist is dismounted but I’ll be pulling the engine in a couple of days so the welder can finish up and will take more pics then.

This is the engine as seen from the main cabin. The second shot shows the excess material on the bearers, which can be trimmed and also the amount of space I have for a sea chest. I’m kinda waffling about that, It makes sense but putting one in will possibly cause problems with the flooring. The intent was to gain space in the cabin, but if I have to raise the flooring to cover over the seacocks, then I don’t gain anything. I’ll have to decide soon as the welder has to do that work.

 

There is only one spot on the bearers which need rework, that is where the solenoid is almost hitting the bearer.

After all is said and done, the engine landed almost perfectly where it will live. The line up between couple and shaft log is just about perfect, and the box only needs welding on the inside to complete. I’m surprised there is no blood on the plates. I guess most of that ended up in the main cabin. That aft rear corner of the box is where I shoved my thumb into the grinder disk.

Final shot, the one I was sweating. The clearance under the engine. That frame took for ever to nibble away, each bit coming off in half inch chunks. It would have been faster to use the new 7″ grinder with a disk but I decided as long as the Chinese POS was working I’d use it. Now that its done and the engine is in place I see that I could well have left the frame as it was. I’ll be putting a small piece of bar across the gap just for continuity.

Once the engine is back in the cockpit I can notch the bearer and get started on chipping out the 4 bays between frames 7 and 9, port and starboard. Once I get them cleaned up and epoxy coated and Scott does his thing, I can drop the engine back in and get started on installing the shaft and drip seal.  Finish installing the seacock(s), the depth sounder and sum log and then deal with the corrosion outside. It’s looking more like the second week of June for launch but the other fellow is in the same position so we will be sharing the trucking costs.

 

 

Well, this week is a bust….

Truck blew some piece up on the engine block that  is leaking coolant all over the place. Never mind that the exhaust is shot too. So its in the shop, and I don’t get it back til Friday. I was going to drive up to the prop shop and pick up my new shaft but its the Friday before the long weekend so I’m going to blow it off til next Tuesday. If nothing else turns to crap this week I may get some work done after I get the truck back. Oh well, I can start making up the new wood frame for the lazarette hatch and finish cleaning out the old gasket.

Wooohooo the engine fits like a glove!!…

All that futzing back n forth with tape measure, dummy engine, “pizza shovel” and all the skinned knees and bruises were worth it.

I went down with a friend today and we rigged the engine for the lift with a chain hoist for the vertical lift and my main sheet handling the boom angle. Just as we were getting ready to hoist it up out of the transport cradle, Bruce (the laser level guy) came climbing up the ladder and got drafted to handle the chain hoist. We took it up about 6 inches and attached the mounts to the engine. Having done that, we heaved the transport cradle out of the way onto the main cabin top.  Greg took up position to keep the engine from swinging into anything, I kept it from any side to side movement and handled the boom angle, and Bruce let her down until she was below the level of the cockpit floor but still in mid air. At this point I climbed down and tied a line to the port side forward mount to put some side and forward drag on the engine.  Greg dropped down into the access hatch and took charge of the back end, and we dropped her down right on the money.

I checked the clearances underneath and saw we had gobs of it,  and we still had about 2 inches of rearward travel on the bearers before we would hit the 3/8 holes left from dismantling the “pizza shovel” cross members. So we took up some of the weight and slid the engine back until we could put a couple of bolts in.

Tomorrow I’ll mark the one cut out I need to make on the bearers, on the port side rail adjacent to the  solenoid. There is next to no clearance, and any vibration will cause a problem  so a notch will be cut out and finished.  I will also check the clearance where the hull frame was chopped away and weld in a smaller piece to maintain that frame.

Now that the engine location is known, I can start to fab up the sea chest and will be ordering material for that and the floor beams. We measured all the beams in the main cabin as well and I want that done asap. Walking round on all those sagging floor plates is dangerous. Once I have all the bits fabricated I’ll get Scott down for one final session of welding.

The engine will need to come out one more time, as the interior framing and hull plating needs to be cleaned up, chipped and epoxy coated before the engine goes in permanently. I guess I’ll run up to Streetsville and pick up that ultrasonic thickness tester tomorrow. I’ll be needing it very shortly.

As a final job for the day we took the winter cover off. The cockpit access isn’t water tight yet, (as witnessed by the cup of coffee that tipped over and dripped down on the engine) so I put a tarp over the engine and will get to drilling and tapping the bolt holes tomorrow.

No pictures at this time. Greg took one of the engine going down through the hatch with his phone and its supposed to be on its way but who knows.  If it comes I’ll post it later. Tomorrow, I’ll take my camera and get some pictures.

Ok, time to quit moping….

I didn’t accomplish anything useful in the week leading up to launch, since the prop shaft guy managed to kill any drive I had. I did go down on Friday and Saturday to help with the launch process, and that went (as usual) flawlessly. It appears there are two other boats looking at the same situation, both want to launch and will be needing a truck so we are coordinating our actions and will likely set up a one day deal for 3 boats. Ditto the mast. We can get the crane down here for $100 an hour, split 3 ways it may cost us $68 instead of about $120.

I got a couple of large boxes of parts from Strait Mackay, including the LED lamps. I’m going to do a test run on them and post the results in a later post. They appear to be a nice bit of kit, but oddly there is no “made in ???” mark anywhere on them or their packaging. Chinese no doubt.

I’ve got the lift frame knocked together and will take the winter cover down next Tuesday and try to lift the engine into place. Once its there I can get the critical dimension and figure out where to put the sea chest and cut the parts. When that is done I can get Scott down for another session of welding and get going on the rust repair on the bottom, and honing out the prop strut tube for the cutlass.

We had the spring swap meet at the Ontario Boat Builders Coop today so I actually dragged my butt out of bed for 0900 and made it down there by 0930. First thing I scored was a fuel gauge that will work with my day tank, and a proper diameter life ring. $10. Next thing I picked up was  some dinghy davit tackle.  One set has double blocks, the other has triple blocks, and both have a lift of some 8-10 feet. $75. Apparently the fellow sold the boat and forgot to include them. Works for me!  Going from there I picked up the boom from a Grampian 26 that was being sawn up for scrap.

I figure that getting stuff out of a dink or off the dock is easier with a cargo derrick. I need to get a goose neck fitting that I can attach to the forward side of the mast, and then I can use the stay sail halliard to hold the boom and one of the dinghy rigs to lift stuff up and over onto the deck. The other block set will end up as my boom vang or preventer rig. $10 for the boom. WOOHOO! Actually I wish I had the mast up now and could rig the derrick.  Hauling stuff up off the ground with a hand line is a real pain in the butt.

Good deals all around, and more things checked off the never ending list. Anyway Im posting this from work, so better get at it.

Well, so much for the dead line…

I called the prop shaft maker on Monday to let him know I’d have the dimension he needed to finish the job by that afternoon and that I’d come to pick up the complete job on Thursday…Yeh, dream on. He took on so much work that he’s working til 10pm every night etc etc. He couldn’t possibly get my job done now til next week. AFTER THE LAUNCH WINDOW! So instead of doing my job as far as he could, and then spend one more hour to finish it,  he just parked it off to the side, hasn’t done squat and now I’m SOL. I can’t even buy new material and get it done in a local shop because my prop hub is in some backwater town half way to Ottawa.

Doing a little chasing round for costs, this little fiasco is going to add a minimum of $1500 to the project. Can you hear the steam whistling out my ear holes?

After due consideration, if the world wants to hand me lemons, I’ll pucker up and then make lemonade. This gives me time to do a proper job of the hull bottom and rewire the mast. I’ll get the fuel and exhaust system in first instead of doing it after the launch. I’m still waiting on stuff from suppliers who also appear to have lead in their asses, so that’s it, I ain’t going to sweat it anymore. I figure I’ll be launching sometime toward the end of May.

 

 

Really gave her hell today….

All the steel work is pretty much done but for the welding. The box has been cleaned up, and the frame that may or may not cause a problem is no longer a problem.

Cleaning up the box was fairly easy, but it came at a cost. I picked up some battle damage. There is a 1/16 wide groove across the ball of my right thumb, that’s about a 1/8 to 3/16s deep. Bled pretty good til I got it wrapped in paper towels and about 5 feet of duct tape. (standard millwrights first aid kit)

This is what happens when you are a stupid,  sorry assed, know it all,  son of a bitch who is too lazy to put the guard back on the grinder.  I wrote about grinder burn a few pages ago, so what to I do? Chop my finger half way to the bone.  I took the guard off while cutting some plate down in the shop, and tossed it into the truck. So here I am laying on my side, cutting away the excess metal from the hull skin. I unplug the grinder to change the disk, plug it back in again, start it up and push my thumb into the disk. At least when you do yourself with a grinder, it doesn’t bleed for a few seconds. Long enough for me to crawl back out from under and grab the roll of paper towels. Then it gushes. Anyway, it doesn’t hurt (much) and I’ve cleaned it out as best as I can. I was contemplating wasting half a day in the ER, but its not a cut that they can stitch shut, Its a goddamn groove. I’ve parked my thumb in isopropyl alcohol for a few minutes, picked out what I could of the gunk and put polysporin on it. I’ll have a look at it tomorrow. IF it’s looking nasty I guess I’ll tootle over to the ER and let them debride it and do what they can.

I didn’t let this stop my, and finished off the box before continuing on with the frame. I was planning on letting Scott cut it apart with his larger grinder, and I did actually buy a 7 inch myself but I am loathe to keep the thing for just one job. They are power houses for someone in the trade but rather large for the amateur who only does small jobs. Anyway the Chinese POS is still alive, and it did the job. Lots of small bites but eventually the frame was gonzo. A little dressing up with a grinding disk and it’s finished.

Tomorrow it is supposed to snow. SNOW??? The temp is dropping rapidly so I guess they ain’t kidding. Such being the case I’ll pick up some more steel angle and then head down to make up the lifting derrick so I can do the trial engine installation. I need that critical dimension sooner rather than later. I’ll drop the engine in place, grab the measurement, do some rework on the panel that sits on the access hatch frame, and drill at least 4 holes to tap for 1/4-20 machine screws. Then I’ll heave the engine back out, park it in the delivery cradle and hope Scott can make it down that evening. I also found that I will have to hone out the prop shaft housing, its a tad undersized to fit the cutlass bearing. Naturally I go to look for my brake cylinder hone and discover I tossed it. Oh Bugger.

BTW, I just noticed something odd over the last few days. The post date on this blog is sometimes off by one day. Seems this server is located 4 time zones ahead of me. Its 10:48 pm on the 22nd but it will show the 23rd. I was thinking I was loosing it. Guess not.