9. DECORATIONS

I was allowed to work in the lounge during the week-end due to the bad weather (poor light) we had on Saturday




In this post:


1 Setbacks

2 Decorating

3 Next

4 In Closing


1 SETBACKS

After carefull measuring I found that the excessive side-ways bending of the strips on the one side of the aft deck (mentioned in the previous post) was the result of that side being 15 mm wider than the opposing side. .There was only one solution: strip the entire aft deck, re-align the hull and start again. Heartbreaking to say the least.

Having completed the stripping-up (again) the deck was decorated. Using the "Marquetry" tehnique a design of a setting/rising sun was cut from "Bird's eye Maple" veneer and shapes cut fom brass shim plate to represent a water surface were epoxied to the deck and weighted down with sandbags.


The next morning I found that various air "bubbles" had appeared under the veneer. After a quick search on the Web I found that veneer is extremely difficult to work with. Problems such as cracking, bubbles, contraction, expansion, etc are common - especially with Bird's eye Maple.

Out came the belt sander...........


2 DECORATING

The dark lines and other dark shapes on the deck are 3mm thick Imbuia strips laid into grooves cut with a router.
The pieces of Imbuia are the last remnants of a lounge suite that I had made in the mid-seventies just after (or before?) our marraige.

Bruce from Stealth Performance Products kindly agreed that I can place a brass replica of the Stealth logo on the vessel and this will now probably be done over the mess I had made earlier with the veneer. (I hope I now know a little bit more about veneer and its temperamental properties)

3. NEXT

I found that the colour of the Cedar fades very quickly after sanding and I hope to glass the deck this coming week-end of 22 May 2010. For the moment the vessel is kept under black plastic.

4. IN CLOSING

Thanks to "Iwanayak" from Australia for placing a link to this blog on his very interesting Stealth Kayak Fishing page in Facebook.

See http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stealth-kayak-fishing/114773698562073

"This is no doubt the biggest project you attemted in your life", my wife said over the week-end.

I agree with her - it's been 7 months or more now.

To replicate the elegant shape of the Evolution in 20mm wide wooden strips is challenging to say the least, but Bruce and I have been tossing around a couple of ideas for the next project which will be much faster and easier to build - staying with the basic Evolution design.
(Don't tell my wife)