Tuesday, January 19, 2016

The Varnish Was Framed

Well, it is still mild save that we are being told that this weekend a major snowstorm will move in from Texas and that it will sit off the eastern shore and dump 2 feet of snow on us. Well, one more project to fit in. I want to replace the galley screen that works in hand with the upper clapboard.  Sure, teak would have been good but I am already over 700% spend over the purchase price of the Constance Marie. Hey, sailing and improving the boat is my primary hobby.
Figure 171 - Cockpit table

I started with the teak clapboards. All last season, I used Old English furniture polish to draw out the impurities in the wood. Now I sanded the pieces with 80 grit to get the weather off and used 120 to give it that smooth shave feel.

Three coats of CETOL Teak stain followed by 3 heavy coats of SPAR Varnish until the mirrored look set in.  I love how the same application can make various pieces of teak look different. All in the wood.
Figure 172 - Clap Boards and Compression Post

Figure 173 - Galley Way screen
You can see the how I cut the frames to sandwich a piece of black fiberglass screen in between them. I pulled the screen taught and applied a few staples sunk flush with the wood and then gorilla glued the two pieces of wood together and clamping them every 4 inches. In Figure 172 if you look close to the right of the blue box, you will see two wooden knobs that I drilled and attached center to the outside and inside of the screen frame. These are to make it easy to pull the screen out of its position when you want to enter or exit the galley.