Heavy things

At long last, I located someone to cut my centerboard for me.  It was done by Damian, who owns Aquacut Technologies in Malvern, Pennsylvania, which is about an hour from where I live.  Actually, Damian didn't do it himself.  He does water jet cutting, and his equipment requires a CAD drawing.  He could have made a CAD drawing from my template, but he would have to have charged me for programming to create the CAD, and then to enlarge it to full size to make sure it was accurate.  Instead, he worked with a colleague, who does "old school" flame cutting.  They traced the outline of my full size template on a 7/8 inch steel plate using a special marker.  The flame cutter then follows the mark to make a perfect replica.

The edges were extremely smooth -- far better than could have been achieved freehand, and with minimal scale.  It took me about an hour with the grinder to completely remove the scale and marks from the edge, and to introduce a chamfer.  It took another hour to grind the scallop where the winch cable shackle attaches, and another hour to slightly enlarge the pivot hole from 1 1/2 inches to 1 9/16 to accept my bronze bushing and a protective layer of epoxy between the bushing and the steel plate to retard electrolytic corrosion.

I picked up the board in my Toyota Tacoma, and drove around with it for a week and a half until I figured out how to get it off.  I set up a scaffold with vertical 10 foot 4 x 4s and an 8 foot 2 x 8 between them.  I tied my chain hoist to the center of the 2 x 8, backed the truck underneath, and lifted the board off.

We have lift off!

Once in position, grinding and painting became much easier.  This is not to say that grinding big pieces of steel is ever easy or fun, but lifting it is even less easy and less fun.

Wow.  What a big thing.

The grinding begins.  The sparks fly.

This is where the cable shackle will attach.

I primed the entire board with Pettit Rustlok steel primer, which came recommended by the guys who maintain Olympia, the magnificent old Spanish American War vessel at the Independence Seaport Museum.  I figured if it could help her ancient steel, it was good enough for mine.  Later, I'll go over the board with anti-fouling paint before installation.

All primed.

Last week, I finally closed up the forward end of the cabin, with a fairly complicated shape piece of plywood and serious fillets.  The cabin is now snug and warm -- just in time for warm weather.  Oh, well.

A tight cabin.