Handmade Handrails

Capt'n Pauley's Vitual Boat Yard has replaced his mahogany handrails with a less maintenance material, polymer lumber. He says.. "Polymer Lumber is strong, doesn't absorb water, can be worked with regular woodworking tools, and doesn't require finishing."
Hop on over to his web site to read about why he made the hand rails from this material, and how he constructed them.
I think this material he uses is the same as starboard, on which he wrote a post about here. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

Low Cost Jigs

Over at Dock Six Chronicles, Brian has an excellent article on a jig he made to do some scarfing.

He puts together an excellent explanation with photo's and then follows that up with an explanation of a jig to drill perfect holes to line up for a pin rail.
Hop on over to his blog site to read his "how to" on the jigs.

Teak Grate Cutting Jig

Mark Corke has a teak grate project in hand and shows us how to get perfectly spaced rebates on his teak project. Mark explains first of all, how he came to be making a teak grate. You can read his initial blog here, but essentially he says...." The alterations also meant that I had to install a couple of water tight hatches in the cockpit sole and although they seem robust enough I am a little nervous about walking on them. I don't think that they would break but somehow the cockpit just does not look finished. So I have spent a long time agonizing over what I should do and I have decided to go down the route of the classic teak grating. .....".

Mark, in part two goes on to explain.....

As you can see I made a jig from a couple of sections of scrap three quarters inch plywood into which is cut a slot exactly the same width as the notch that I required in the grating

Off set to one side is another section of wood glued and pinned in position which slots onto the groove already cut and thus giving the current spacing.

To prevent break out, it is essential to back up the cut on both sides. One side is supported by a back fence screwed and glued to the template and the front is supported by another scrap of wood which is simply held in place as the strip is cut. Finger pressure is sufficient but obviously keep your hands away from the cutter. In this shot, I am holding the bearing cutter to illustrate how the whole system works. Of course normally the cutter would be held in an inverted router on a table.
Use a sharp carbide tipped cutter; teak is very abrasive and will dull a HSS cutter in no time at all.

Extra Davit Support

My davits which hold my dingy up are well built and swivel off from two poles at the back of the boat. Even with the gusset on the davit, I feel there are times where perhaps I overload the davits. Quite often I throw extra stuff into the dingy once secured up, as a means of quick storage. Once, I had one of the davits straightened as it had bent a few degrees, near where it joins the vertical post/pole
So I decided to add some extra support to help with the load.
The idea was to use two bolt hose clamps for the poles. From these clamps, by which a cable is secured around the bolt on the clamp, and then run with a tensioner (turnbuckle) out to the end of the davit.

I purchased the cable, swages, turnbuckles, and hose clamps, and cable thimbles.
Assembly only took 2 hours. The swageing was made easy with the big heavy swageing tool that looks like bolt cutters. Turnbuckles were assembled with the wire to give tension  to the support wire once installed.
Finally the copper swages were rapped in a self amalgamating  tape.

To the left is one of the cables installed. The hose clamp on the vertical pole can hardly be seen, but the top piece of wire goes around the bolt of the hose clamp as it's mounting point.
The whole job took less than 2 hours, and I'm confident it will give the extra support I desire.

Tale of Two Tapes

The two masking tapes shown vary quite a lot in both price and quality.
The upper most tape was from a local chandler for $6 which I had to buy on a weekend when I had run out of the other.
The lower tape was more than $16.

Which would you buy?

The top one, even while applying the tape, I could tell was going to leave "furry" edges on my paint line.
The bottom one is a 3M product #2093EL called blue scotch, and has an "Edge Lock", which leaves beautiful fine lines after the removal. I also noticed that the tape could also tolerate some sanding up to, and on the tape, without affecting the edge.
I did one coat with the cheaper tape  and then removed and my suspicions about a furry line were confirmed. I applied the better tape about 1/16 inch further out and re-sanded before painting. A rescue of a paint job that I'm sure I would have been disappointed with had I left the cheap masking tape on. What annoys me even more, is the same tape in in the USA is $8.99 retail. Why should it be $16 here in Australia (with the stronger $)? But, I always knew Australia charged like wounded bulls for everything. Unfortunately, a necessary stop off on an around the world journey.