Boat Repair, Restoration, Building
Building a Palm Beach 22 mahogany runabout designed by Nelson Zimmer
We applied 3 coats of clear urethane to the inside of the topsides of the Palm Beach 22 with the roll and tip method. After sanding it flat, I decided it was finally worth it to upgrade my shop with a spray booth. Once you think about the difficulty of all those different surfaces, it’s easy to convince yourself of the efficiency of spraying finishes. Continue reading “Spraying the PB22”
I finally answered all the questions I generated in my previous post. So it was time to get all that stuff out of the boat and prep it for varnishing and painting the inside. As you can imagine, it’s much easier to do all this coating before enclosing the hull with the deck. Continue reading “Building a Temporary Spray Booth”
I’m trying to get ready to coat the inside of the boat before I begin construction of the deck. It’ll be much easier this way with an open boat to work in. But before I can do the coating (clear coating on the sides and white paint in the bilge), I need to make sure all the pieces that make the boat go will fit. In the process, I’ll drill some more holes, glue in backing blocks, fabricate platforms, etc. As usual, what seems like a straightforward process requires many steps. Continue reading “Fitting the Mechanicals on the PB22”
When you’re building an inboard boat, getting the engine and propeller shaft in perfect alignment is an interesting process. It’s a logical process that involves aligning the engine and transmission, shaft, shaft log, and strut. It starts with the strut (the piece that holds the shaft in place just forward of the propeller). There is a tube the shaft passes through that gets glued into a hole bored through the keel. Getting that tube, called the shaft log, glued in line with the shaft and engine is the aim of this process. Continue reading “The Strut, Shaft, and Shaft Log”
It’s been a long time since I posted anything about the Palm Beach. I haven’t forgotten it, and I haven’t stopped working on it. But there have been some intervening projects like the Riva, shoulder surgery, a trip or two… Continue reading “Back to the Palm Beach 22”
I’ve done all I can to the hull from the outside. So it’s time to flip the boat upright so I can start working from the inside. To prepare for this, I’ve made 3 cradles to hold the boat in position once its upright. I used the patterns for some of the frames with one placed directly under where the engine will be mounted. Using the waterlines on the patterns, I was able to set up the cradles so the boat will sit level and plumb. Continue reading “Flipping the Boat”
At some point, if you’re going to build a boat, you’re going to have to put some holes in it. It just doesn’t seem natural at first. But it gets easier the more you do it. Best to get it right the first time though. Continue reading “Boring the Shaft Hole”
I never did get the fiberglass to work to my satisfaction on the topsides. I tried again with smaller batches in cooler weather, but still got the fiberglass veil I spoke of in my earlier post. So I stripped it off again, decided not to stain the boat but just let the natural woodgrain show, and moved on.
A man’s got to know his limitations.
–Dirty Harry
I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. — Thomas Edison
Adding a layer of fiberglass cloth to any wooden boat will add an enormous amount of toughness to it. And if you do it right, the fiberglass is invisible. That’s right — invisible. The problem is in the “doing it right” part.
Okay, let’s step back a bit. Continue reading “Fiberglass Setback”
Last time, I talked a little about cutting the flat along the keel so I could put a cap over it to keep from having exposed end grain there. My friend Steve asks, “Well, exactly how did you do that?” (or words to that effect). It did, in fact, take a little bit of doing. So I decided to explain myself a little better in a follow-up post. Continue reading “Cutting the Flat”