Oh Epifanes! Oh Epifanes!
How lovely is your Tiller.
In classy gloss will always glow
Thru summer sun & winter snow.
Oh....etc
Oh Epifanes! Oh Epifanes!
Your graceful curves look mo'betta.
With regular touchups most sublime
You bling my Tiller thru all time!
Oh....etc
Last edited by ebb; 12-05-2009 at 04:12 PM.
What a nice poem! Thanks for the advice. Epifanes it will be.
I stayed an hour after work, cut out and started forming the tiller. Here's how far I got. I need to get more radius on the edges.
Ben
Cold and wet morning up on City Island. But I wanted to see if my new tiller fit before I started to sand and varnish it back at my shop. Building a new tiller seemed a good starting project.
Ben
Great Job!
Careful... the tiller was also my very first project!
- With your skills, I'll be waiting to see how the rest goes!
Last edited by Rico; 12-05-2009 at 05:37 PM.
Rico your boat "Mephisto Cat" (great name) is the gold standard I'm sure everyone here is looking to copy.
I've got skills gained from working with my hands most of my life, I'm 48. But fiberglass repair is new to me. And I haven't really been around boats very much since I was a kid. I know I'm going to make many mistakes working 109.
The tiller seems like the logical place to start working on a sailboat. You can make it look really nice and hope the rest of the boat follows. I brushed my first coat of Epifanes on the tiller last night. How many coats do I really need to apply? Purpleheart is a very dense non-porous wood so the varnish doesn't need to fill much grain.
Ben
Last edited by Ariel 109; 12-06-2009 at 05:05 AM.
Thanks for the nice comments!
I am a big fan of epifanes varnish. You do need to build-up a nice thick coat of varnish on first application. It is for the wood's benefit mainly by leeping the weather out of the wood, but the thickness also helps to stabilize the varnish coating itself, giving it a bit of body and allowing it to last MUCH longer and look better...
A nice thick coating also helps both to minimize the damage of dings & scratches to the wood, and when you do need to refresh the varnish - you abrade the coat of varnish- not the wood. The base layers seem to do quite nicely.
I start with a very diluted coating of varnish. I dilute about 50-60% producing a very thin varnish that is easily absorbed by the wood which should be dry. I think that first step is important so that the varnish & wood get full adhesion allowing for a good transition between materials. After that, I start building up the varnish thinning progressively less at each application.
I sand after each coat for smothness and to create more of a mechanical bond between coats. By coat #4 or so, I am already at full strength (0% dilution - straight out of the can). I usually do a coat in the early morning and one at night (in the summer in California) your drying time may vary in the NY winter...
I did about 8 coats on my tiller initially, and about 10 on my coambings. I highly recommend something like that... I went with about 4 coats on the companionway wood, and I can see the difference! (Already on the to-do list!)
Since you sand lightly at each coat, the build-up is not tremendous. You do end-up with a nice solid layer of nice varnish that is strong and readily accepts spot treatments in case of scratches.
Good luck!
A sunny but cold day up at City Island a day after our first big snow storm. I went up to the Bronx and checked up on 109. If you look close you can see the resident family of swans wading in the background. These guys are as big as ostriches.
I finished varnishing the new tiller which was tougher to do well than I thought and hope to soon start working on some new coamings. I keep learning all sorts of important things from your old postings.
Ben
Last edited by Ariel 109; 12-21-2009 at 05:29 AM.
That modren foredeck looks pretty good
Came back from the lumber yard today with these two Sepele boards to make new coamings, winch stands and hand holds for Ariel 109. Half the price of Hondo Mahogany and finishes to the color of a lovely old bottle of Bordeaux. These 14' long boards are almost book-matched.
Acquired this nice spirit stove for the galley. It's a Homestrand alcohol stove who's style I think matches the Ariel. Works nice, lights right up.
I've been sanding and re-oiling the interior's teak trim and doors. Oiled teak is so pretty, I'm thankful nobody ever varnished it all.
And a question. Where do you store the dinette table that came with the Ariel when you're not using it?
Ben
Those like like some nice beginnings for the combing boards, I hope you include the 'after' pictures also.
It is funny you mention the 'look' of the stove, it DOES seem to just kind of 'fit' the interior.
The dinette table i not something I ever recall hearing about as a standard Ariel option. I did have a folding table that came with the boat (pretty much a fancy TV tray). It worked ok, and was nice for some tasks below but the stowage problem caused it to go the way of all things....
I have had many different lapdesks, and and like aboard that have been tried and abandoned. They were stowed under the counter, where the foot wells for the settes are. If you search, there are some nice folding surfaces some have come up with.
I believe this boat came with a dinette table, could seat four. It clips into the jams of the forward cabin door and on the other end has a single leg that hinges to fit into a plate on the cabin's sole. It's table surface is the same formica used on the rest of the boat. And it's framed using the same teak mouldings as used in the galley area. Everything about it and the installation looks factory.
I've seen pictures of other Ariels with the clips for the table in the door jams.
Ben
New aluminum spreader bases I welded together this afternoon. First I annealed with a torch two 1/4" thick small pieces of 6061-T6 sheet. Then hammered the sheet with a rawhide mallet over a sheet metal dolly that nearly matched the curve of the mast. Then welded the tubes to the sheet. Still need to drill the holes.
6061 has good corrosion characteristics so I don't know if I'm going to do much in the way of a finish. Just clean then up with a file and brush.
Ben
Looks like you have welded once or twice before
I was thinking the same thing... looks pretty good to me.Originally Posted by Commander 147
Looks like you have welded once or twice before
Could you be persuaded to fabricate another pair????
Carl
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