Boat bookcase 5

Well, 15 months of down time and I'm back to work on the boat bookcase.
For a recap see:
1. here,

2. here,

3. here,

4. and here,


I left off needing to contour the sides of the shelves so that they match the curve of the boat, defined by the plywood back (er, bottom?). I thought this was going to take a long time because all I had was a belt sander. Well, recently I bought a cheap angle grinder and this thing removes wood pretty quickly. So I used the grinder and sander and had the shelves ready in about 45 minutes.

Now I needed a bow support. I marked and cut a piece of 2x4, screwed it to the bow and contoured it as well.

The strip running down the length on top is only temporary. It is nailed into each shelf so that the front edge of the shelves are the same distance apart as the back edges, which are screwed to the plywood back.

On to the boat sides. I wanted something at least 1/2 inch thick, and painted, but knew that I wasn't going to be able to bend 1/2 inch plywood. The answer was to use 2 pieces of 1/4 inch plywood for each side and make a sandwich with glue in between. Here is the plywood marked and ready to cut. The piece closest to the camera is extra.


With the plywood cut to width I applied glue down the shelf edges and fastened the first side. Here it is from the inside:


And here it is from the outside:


Then I applied the other side. I had to hold my camera a little high to snap this pic, so it doesn't do it justice.


Finally, using a spray adhesive, I applied a liberal coat to the second pieces and installed them on top of the first. Then I removed the long strip for the front edge spacing. I didn't take a picture, but it looks like a boat at this point.

Next up will be sanding, painting, and applying solid wood strips to cover the plywood edges.

Couple of things going on.

Hello there.

I can't believe that it has been more than a month since my last blog entry. Since then I have been working on two things.

I put together a sort of "A-frame" thingy to suspend a rope chair from. The construction is complete and only needs some faux-weathering (paint job). It took about a week to build and was sort of fun. In order to do it (I had no plans, just knew what it should look like) I first built a HUGE carpenter's square out of two 2x4s. Used the 3 foot/4 foot/5 foot right triangle to lay out the angled legs. Once I had one leg made I was able to take apart the jig and use those as 2 of the other 3 legs. You'll see when I post pictures. The thing is tremendously sturdy and made entirely from wood I had laying around plus 10 feet of electrical conduit (less than 3 bucks!!) for braces.

The other thing I have been doing is tiling my basement laundry room/half bath. No easy chore, this area had 2 layers of vinyl flooring, separated by 1/4 inch plywood and all glued down to cement. The plywood and top layer (done by me, too hastily, about 15 years ago) had bubbles under it and popped when you stepped over one. This would not make for a good tile base. So I used a heat gun and removed EVERYTHING down to the concrete. It took 5 days to do the removal of 66 square feet. Yes, I know, asbestos potential. But from what I read, asbestos is a problem when you are exposed to it for LONG periods of time (read: miners of asbestos came down with lung diseases). I wore a respirator and worked slowly and carefully. Anyway, I just finished laying the tile and now I need to put in the grout. When that is done I will add tile baseboards that match. Then it will be complete and hopefully last a VERY long time.

Pictures pending...I've been taking them as I go. Just too busy to format and upload them.

Next post sooner.