Owatrol D1 - mixed fillings

December 18, 2019 by Lukasz Kumanowski

Last job this year - before Xmas and New Year - oiling ceiling planks.

I took sanded board home, to oil them in warm and dry air and to have better control over the process. The trick with Owatrol D1 is that wood needs to be saturated with oil BUT there must not be any excess on the surface. Such oil will harden and stay as bright, shiny spots on otherwise smooth and silky surface, looking ugly. One of ceiling planks which I oiled on the boat developed this, other turned out uniformly silky. Having now all planks at home I could see to it and check what needs to be done to avoid this.

Oiling itself is easy and very pleasant - seeing wood colour and texture coming back to life. Unlike varnish oiling requires no wet edge so it goes quickly and easy. The last coat is the one which stays on the surface and does not want to dy within 30 minutes. Then - according to label - one should take a cotton rug, dope it lightly in oil and wipe all excess oil from the surface. So I did. Planks looked a bit shiny but uniform.

I left them for 2 hours and came back to see how it develops. I noticed that wood is “sweating” oil in few spots, forming these shiny areas I want to avoid.

Following instructions on the label I wiped them again with oil-wetted rug but they kept coming back. I then switched to clean cotton rug, dry, and wiped them several times. Oil was already touch-dry but not yet hardened. It seems this procedure works better - spots loose shiny blink but with light at certain angle I still see them.

This can be due to the fact that these old mahogany planks were well soaked with linseed oil many years ago but also because D1 is in fact considered a base for D2 which gives varnish-like finish. I’ll see how they look in daylight, after oil cures but now it seems that D2 is unavoidable.

Scrubbing, sanding

December 15, 2019 by Lukasz Kumanowski

Short visit to boatyard tonight, just 3 hours during which I cleaned starboard-side ceiling planks. Procedure as before: first comes removal of oil blobs and old varnish with Bahco blade, followed by orbital sander with 60 and 240 grid paper.

I considered leaving these planks after just scrubbing, to retain patina but the colour became unequal and still too dark. The purpose of this job is not only to refresh them but also to get more light in the cabin hence keeping old stain on otherwise red mahogany contradicts this point.

I took all planks home, to oil them during the week - it is too cold and too wet to do that on the boat.

Poshing boat furniture.

December 14, 2019 by Lukasz Kumanowski

With recent delivery from Toplicht came brass and mahogany rings. I wanted to upgrade a bit the look of my boat furniture and frame simple finger holes with rings. I’m going to make additional folding table in the pentry, with two openings for the kitchenette so matching all others seemed to be proper now.

Since there are no rings of diameter 20mm, as my current openings, I needed to re-drill them to 32mm. This cannot be done freehand with smaller openings already in place so I took all door to proper workshop to do the job on the drill press.

I wanted to keep the centres in the same place so before drilling with 32 Fornster bit I callibrated the machine with 20mm drill above each component.

Compared to freehand drilling this job was quick and easy. Cuts went cleanly and perfectly smooth.

Dry fit prove that all fits so I could go to my boatshop for final finishing and re-installation of all parts.

Having door still disassembled was a good moment to clean them from old stickers and solidified blobs of linseed oil which previous owners left after oiling. Scraping with sharp blades, followed by 320 grid paper smoothed up all surfaces without removing too much of beloved patina. To bring back the colour all surfaces were treated with light coat of linseed oil, dried after a while to avoid blobs. The surface became satin and smooth.

By keeping the centres in the same position I hoped to have everything aligned as it was - I did not notice any misalignment with the old, smaller holes. However, after drilling I found that double-door cabinet had these holes shifted a tiny bit and it became obvious with bigger holes. Well, I thought, I will have to live with that now.

To my surprise, after installation it became all right! Even though the openings are indeed shifted it was purposefully made like that (apparently) since the whole cabinet is not levelled - it follows boat’s rake (curvature)! So while shifted they harmonise with the interior.

At least in my eyes and that’s what matters.

Rings and openings were coated with linseed oil. Most of them were press-fitted, enabling easy removal should I decide to varnish these cabinets. In one case I needed to add little Ettan as one ring was slightly undersized.

I modified brass rings to be mounted in cabin sole - filed down side extrusions as in my experiments they did not work with hardwood. After some measurements with holes placement I removed the sole and drilled freehand the openings for fingers, enabling easy lifting of cabin sole for bilge access.

This took considerably more time than on drill press but the result is the same.

I primed these holes with generous amount of Ettan - after all there will be moisture here and with epoxied wood I don’t want to trap water there.

Rings went in as press fit so I will be able to remove them for future renovation of the floor. That concludes the work on new cabin sole. Small touch ups on the bottom side with epoxy will be done in spring, when temperature allows proper curing.

The weather was really nasty, with heavy rain and wind so after five hours in the boatyard I called it a day. Tomorrow I will resume cleaning planks for cabin ceiling.

BoatWorks in print

December 10, 2019 by Lukasz Kumanowski

I’m a big fan of analogue, physical things so the idea of putting words and pictures from this web page into a book was with me from the very beginning. Partially because it’s easier and nicer to browse a book rather than the web page, partially also due to volatile nature of the Internet: the page is here today but tomorrow it might be gone. Having it in the book makes it available always - to some respect - and makes it “physical”.

My favourite supplier of print-on-demand books is Blurb and I print all my books with them. Superior quality at reasonable price if you ask me.

With this book I wanted to experiment a bit. I chose B&W edition on cream paper, hard-bounded. I’ve received the book after few days and the effect is very pleasing.

The cover is matt-finished in fact. I played a little trick with it by choosing glossy picture with light flare which makes it look glossy but it’s not.

Colour photographs printed on thin, cream-coloured and matt paper turned out very good, making it look a bit like reportage book, which was my intention. The good thing with Blurb is that I can print this book on another type of paper - photo paper or whatever - and make it colour book without a need to redo the design process. Just specify it at check-out and done.

I didn’t do any image processing to optimise photos for B&W printing - they went as they were. It’s not a photo book so they serve only as illustration to words, more important to me in this book.

That was a proof of concept and I see that it works. I stopped on 260 pages, landing somewhere in May this year when I put Meritaten to water after extensive renovation. Already now I have material for the second part so it will follow shortly in the same format.

Oiling finished. Ceiling on port side. Cabin sole finishing. Starting cabin ladder renovation

December 08, 2019 by Lukasz Kumanowski

The weather for the last two weeks is typical Swedish autumn: rain with snow, windy and cold. Not very welcoming so my stays in the boatyard are limited to few hours on each visit.

With freezing temperatures I noticed that the wood stopped taking oil: after draining from the bilge I have all the time the same amount of oil in the canisters. Clear sign to stop the procedure.

Port side ceiling planks, oiled two weeks ago, have cured and turned silky-matt finish. Not exactly what I expected with Owatrol D1 so I will probably oil them with D2 when the weather becomes dry. Up till then I screwed them in their place with new bronze screws, utilising old screw holes in big frames. It looks neat although I’m not sure I like the gap between planks. I will check the starboard side if it also had these gaps - in case it is tight there I’ll modify ceiling on the port side.

This weekend I finished drilling and mounting all brass tubes into the cabin sole planks. Tedious job and I would not do it should I do it again. Now it’s done and looks very nice.

What is left is drilling and mounting brass rings acting as finger holes for lifting the floor. I need to experiment a bit how to handle it: these brass rings have extrusions, supposedly acting as friction mounting features but that does not work on hardwood. It’s fine on pine but it splits hard mahogany. I might chose to remove them on the lathe and glue these rings instead. Risking splitting this newly made floor is not something I want to try.

As a last thing this weekend I chose to finish cleaning old sound isolation foam on the back of cabin ladder. Sandpaper would get clogged instantly with this mixture of polyurethane and glue so I used metal brush mounted on the drill.

Half an hour and one battery charge later the job was finished, leaving clean plywood marred with steel brush. That’s not a problem really as I will put two coats of epoxy on it and then glue new sound isolation on top of that. Should work fine and make the cabin more habitable when Yanmar-san is running.