Commander 147

[Commander 147]

Here are the drawings I gave him.

I also gave him a full scale profile of the mast section so he could tell how to bend the plates that hold the assembly in the mast. My drawing does not show it but I had him drill and tap for the 6 screws where the two loose plates that lock it into the mast attach to the welded stainless assembly. Tapping the stainless is a lot easier when someone else does it.

BTW I ended up going to a larger diameter sheeve than the Harken one I first bought. I ended up using the Ronstan RF1767 sheeve that has just shy of 2" diameter.

The fabricator I used was a company called Day Metal Products and I dealt with the owner who's name is Bobby Day. The Company is located in Brooksville, FL and the phone number is 352-799-9258.

Tell Bobby that if he does not have enough information in his file to build yours that he can call me and I will bring my parts back to him to use as a sample.

Also one thing I would do differantly if doing it over the plate on the aft side of the mast that locks the assembly into the mast should have longer legs on it to get the screws further away from the slot in the mast. On mine they bottomed out on the welded assembly so I had to add some washers to pull everything tight.

[Commander 147]

But I do have to admit I have not been around here for some time.

Fall has finally come to Florida and the weather is much better for working on Destiny. When the summer temperatures were 95 degrees every day with 95% humidity (the normal Florida summer weather for about 5 months straight) I have a hard time forcing myself out in the heat to work. And my epoxy allergy forces me to cover up which makes the heat even less inviting. But I have 4 or 5 months of good temperatures ahead of me now so it's back to work.

I have made progress on several fronts since I last posted. The deck recore is completely done now (I'll show some pics of that job in a future post) and I have finished something that was a bit of a challenge to my skills (which means I really enjoyed doing it) Destiny's forward hatch. I wanted to build a frame around the hatch to have something to attach the hardware to and to make it look better.

As I started looking at what I would have to do to make the frame I realized all 4 sides of the opening were different. And the only way I could come up with to make the frame fit the ceiling correctly was to make some 1/4" thick strips and spread glue between them in groups of three and clamp them to the bottom side of the deck around the opening. First I did the 2 sides and after taking them down I did the forward and aft sides of the opening.

Now I had the 4 pieces that would make up the frame in a very rough form. I shaped them enough so I could cut mortises where the frame parts came together and used loose tenons to join the 4 pieces together. At this point I had a very rough frame that all 4 sides curved at a different radius. The center of the frame was smaller than the opening in the deck for the hatch which was by design.

I shaped the outside edges of the frame and did some preliminary sanding. Then I glued the frame to the bottom side of the deck with thickened epoxy. After the epoxy dried and I could remove the clamps I ground the inside of the frame flush with the vertical lip of the hatch opening. Because the fiberglass was curved as it transitioned to the vertical lip there was a V shaped area that I had to fill with thickened epoxy. After that dried and I could sand it smooth I glassed in the inside perimeter of the deck opening from the top of the lip to the bottom of the wood. This strengthened the lip area and finished everything off.

Here are a couple of pictures of the completed project.

[Ariel 109]

Hi Jerry, nice to see the progress on Destiny, as always beautiful! Please more pictures.

Ben