The Arctic Tern Project

Volume 6                           Issue No. 12                      December 2009

Click here to return to Boat Project Page.

Chingaderos

My friend and colleague Larry Cheek (http://lawrencewcheek.com) gave me this word last month.  Larry grew up in Texas and his once-upon-a-time proximity to the Mexican border has given him a whole other language for describing the otherwise indescribable.  Larry loosely translates Chingadero as “a small, extremely annoying boat part.”  Its actual translation from Mexican Spanish is a little more risqué (look it up on Google) but you get the idea.  For my own personal use I’ve extended the meaning to include small, annoying boat details and I have to say it’s a pretty satisfying word to wield around in the boatshed.  Thanks Larry!

 

So as this project draws nearer and nearer to completion (it is…isn’t it?) it seems a higher and higher percentage of things left on the to-do list fall into the chingadero category.  That’s ok.  I’m savouring it.  Although the details may be annoying at times, I’m grateful for them.  They tell me I’m getting closer to being done and every day I drop to my knees and give thanks that I don’t still have a trunk cabin to build or deck to lay.  Lots of work left to be done though and, although things are moving a bit slow at the moment, it’s all still moving in the right direction (forward).

Christmas at Santa’s Workshop

Ok, before I get into the boat work for this month I wanted to show you a few pictures of a little something I made for my grand-nephew, Alex.  This little truck is treenail fastened with bronze hardware (washers between the wheels and chassis), Doug Fir chassis, Mahogany body, and Purple Heart tires.  In case you are wondering MMIX is 2009 in Roman Numerals.

 

 

More Electrical

Ok, enough with the fun and games.  After using the spray-on satin finish varathane on Alex’s truck and realizing how ridiculously easy it was I decided to spray the electrical box that I made last month with the same stuff.

 

 

It turned out great.  Four coats applied in about an hour.  No sanding.  No nothing.  Easy, peazy.  Man, I’m tempted to buy an armload of these and just climb inside the boat and go nuts.

 

After a few days inside to cure nice and hard I mounted it inside the boat and made up the big copper tubes that’ll carry the electrical wires up into the box.

 

I really like the look of these copper conduit tubes.  It’s kind of a retro thing.  You can almost imagine a big coal-fired furnace somewhere generating steam to pump through them.

 

Here’s another shot of the inside.

 

I added a couple 12 volt receptacles, one on the side of the box for inside use:

 

And one to the outside that has it’s back inside the box.

 

 

While I was still on the electrical stuff I sealed all the cabin-lighting-conduit-holes with epoxy.

 

And I decided on where to mount my on-board battery charger (in the starboard forward cockpit locker).

 

I also made up the trim around the heater.  This is attempt # 3 (a chingadero if I ever saw one).

 

And figured out how I would route the propane hose and fan wiring from the heater and the nav light wiring from the mast.

 

 

 

Mast wiring will go through the hole pictured below.

 

It, and the heater fan wiring, will then connect up to the wiring running aft to the electrical box.  The connection will be made through this terminal block.

 

This way, if the mast needs to be removed I can just disconnect the wires from this block.  You can also use jumpers on this block to create common circuits so I can run the heater fan and possibly an additional overhead light from a single 12 gauge wire coming from the electrical box to this terminal block rather than running separate wires for each device.  The terminal block and all the connections will live in the under-berth storage locker immediately in front of the bulkhead that the heater is mounted on.

 

And will then pass through this split loom and, along with the propane hose, make its way aft.

Other Stuff

I still haven’t quite figured out how I want to do the rest of the trim on the berth fronts (that’s part of the reason why I had a bit of a time getting the trim around the heater sorted out).  I did another mock-up using inexpensive pine.

 

And I think that’s has helped me decide I don’t want the trim to be that wide.  I dunno.  I’ve got some ideas I’m going to try out next month.

 

The other thing I did was to remake the backing blocks for the slatted backrest.  The first ones I made (way back when) were too skimpy.  Especially since I had now decided that the slats needed to be removable.  Anyway these new blocks are nice and are fastened much better.

 

 

I think that’s about it for this month.  There are other things my mind flits back and forth on as the whim strikes me but haven’t included here; retractable bowsprit (I think it’s going to happen!), motor mounting, etc. but these will all be covered in future reports when some real progress is made.

Next Month

More interior work.