Thursday 28 March 2013

Level - I wish

The first all day session on the boat for some time.  I had the BT engineer coming to fit a telephone line so I had to take it off anyway.  Two things were on the agenda yesterday.  The BT engineer was due to fit a telephone line to the ship (which should have been easy) and a delivery of 100 pieces of 1 by 2 from the timber yard.  Timber in the morning.  BT in the afternoon.

The morning was spent using up the remaining 1 by 2 on the mess walls.  I ran out about 10.00 am.  So I started to grind off the old rusty around the rivets on the inside of the ship.  The surface needs to be clean and rust free (ish) to give the insulation a better chance of sticking.  Messy but necessary.

Cut a long story short, despite telling BT it was a ship and with all the other ships having lines the BT engineer took that deep intake of breath followed by ' specialist job this'.  But after lots of huffing and puffing off he went and fitted a line with me working as engineer's mate.  He of course turned up an hour early which was great.

Sadly the wood due in the morning was late.  By an hour beyond the latest delivery time ensuring both BT and wood guy were present at the same time.  Sigh.

But with wood on board and new line fitted I could progress on.

The speed of progress as I get used to the handling of the nail gun, the cutting of the wood and the fitting of the battens meant I completed another wall in an hour or so.  

Ceilings next, but there lies a whole story of woe.  Nothing in the boat is level, parallel or straight.  Nothing.  The problem with using a spirit level is that while it enables you to make a piece of wood level in relation to the planet earth, if the boat itself is not sitting level then it will look like the set of a 1970s batman episode.

But luckily the boat was relatively level yesterday (I use the door ways as the baseline.  But the ceilings are a different story.  It turns out that not only does the ceiling slope (to make the roof angle towards the edge to make water run off, very sensible) the beams that hold the ceiling up are arched (as is the roof) so that if you put wood along the edge of the beam there is a big gap in the middle.  On top of that the beams are not parallel, even spaced and two are actually bent along their length.

Needless to say, after a long day, the ceiling can wait.

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