Day 260 Nice seats! Prop tube,safety hooks
The stange view above is actually looking down the prop tube. Yes we've jumped to that as it needs to be done. Some of the readers have emailed me asking why not complete everything in order so each project could be seen from start to finish? Maybe once the whole boat is finished but it just doesn't work that way "during".
Anyway, after much deliberation, we have decided to coat the prop tube with something. Most metal boat builders on the subject have said the steel inside the tube won't rust very fast and will last for many years. For me that was ok, but I don't think Gena liked the idea of out boat slowly rusting away inside there where it can't be seen. Also, one would think the rust breaking away might cause the cutless bearing to wear down or worse grind the shaft up.

Coal tar seemed like the number one choice as it goes on nice and thick. The ends where the bearings must be pushed in needed to be masked off. ( Not easy when your hand doesn't fit inside the tube! )

A wire wheel was welded to a long 3/8" rod, then a drill to clean out anything loose. Then compressed air to blow it out.

To paint Gena used a toilet brush attached to the same long 3/8" rod.. ( We bought a new brush in town for $7 but decided to keep that one and use the old one, haha! )

It all worked quite well, but was a bit messy.

 
I was up above bending the same rod for safety line attachments on the pilot house roof and around the cockpit areas. These are needed all over the place, well, anywhere yopu want to safely go on deck during rough weather!
In the cockpit the corners were used. They are low enough that one won't hit their ankles and high enough that I could weld all around.

They are solid anyway!
After we both were done our other stuff, we decided to try bending some 1 1/2" SS pipe for the radar arch. We were thinking on taking some pipe into a local muffler shop tomorrow, so we need to see if we can do it ourselves first.

We have a limited supply of this size of stainless pipe, only enough for one test bend. It was aquired at a scrap yard and is in very nice condition. To buy it new, we need to make a $500 order ( our last! ) but we're not sure what else we will need to add in the order yet, so this is all we have to make the arch.

We had purchased a hydraulic jack style bender a couple years ago but have never used it other than to try to bend some small pipe, which buckled immediately. This pipe fits perfectly into the 1 1/2" dye so we decided to try it.

Carefully we went along inch be inch watching for buckling. This determined the radius of the curve. If it looked like the buckle was getting too deep we would add more bend points on.

Success!! We will do our own bending now.

Now for the shape factor. I have given this a lot of thought, hopefully it looks as it does in my head hehe.

Day 106:
9 hours: Coated prop tube, welded on safety hooks, tested pipe bender


To DAY 259
Repairs at less than $50 cdn/hr!
Custom circuit design $20/hr
Custom Microprocessor designs
To DAY 261+