Month: April 2022

The teak for the bow pulpit was sanded and coated with two layers of teak oil.

The original teak cheeks for the rudder experience dry rot and the previous owner cut the tops of them and fabricated a very ugly stainless steel can to replace them. However, this changed the lines of the boat dramatically. It is not possible to obtain high-density teak anymore and low-density teak does not have the same structural strength. In fact, even the original teak cheeks experience cracks where the bolt for the tiller passed, and that point was definitely the weak link in the design. So, we fabricated new cheeks using the original shape using marine plywood. The original cheeks were 1-1/2″ thick, so we employed two layers of 3/4″ plywood and to afford even greater strength for the stress of the tiller we sandwiched in-between the layers of plywood a sheet of 3/16″ stainless. The stainless was cut to shape with an angle grinder, drilled with cobalt-tipped bits, and the plywood was routed out to accommodate the piece of stainless steel.

The two halves of plywood were glued with epoxy, the edge was rounded with the router, and the cheeks were soaked in resin.

The cheeks will be mounted to the rudder with countersunk bolts (just like the original teak cheeks), but the bolt holes will be filled with resin and the cheeks will be covered with layers of fiberglass, thereby creating a sold fiberglass rudder that will be considerably stronger than the original. we will fabricated a spacer for the top of the cheeks out of the original teak cheeks.

All the teak on the deck has been taken down to bare wood (using a head gun and scraper), screw hols were plugged with dowels, cracks were filled with epoxy and sawdust, and ten coats of Man-O-War glossy varnish has been applied. Once we splash the boat (and are away from the dust of the work yard) we will sand the brightwork and apply a couple more coats of varnish.