The origins of symmetry
In carpenting a curved boat bedroom (aka the “forward cabin”), you quickly hit the question of symmetry. Namely, to where do you reference the measurements? It turns out the portholes aren’t in the same place, nor are the steel supports, and it doesn’t help that the boat isn’t level.
Anyway, on Monday I drilled the hole for the water tank “sender” (??? weird name), and then tried to tap the ~39mm hole with this beast:
In hindsight trying to do that by hand with a spanner was ridiculous; it’s an industrial tap designed for lathes or tower drills.
Disheartened, but I had a lucky thought: make the hole bigger, and get a locking nut to use on the other side. That arrived midweek, which I fitted on Saturday:
(The copper pipe is the tank outlet, from whence the water pump shall slurp.)
The sensor doesn’t quite reach the bottom, but that’s fine. They don’t come in 582mm lengths; it was 550 or 600mm.
Also during the week I had a few attempts at fitting this one stubborn piece of wood under the port gunwale, which… after a week of “fuck you”s and “god dammit”s, that same day my persistence prevailed:
On Monday I ordered more wood; enough panelling for the bedroom plus bathroom ceiling, and some pine boards for bathroom shelves and a cupboard at the end of the bed. Originally I planned to buy a sideboard, perfectly-sized, but I’ve resorted to making one instead. I also ordered some floor samples — it feels like that’s creeping up on me.
On Sunday morning I continued with the boards under the starboard gunwale, then wired up the tank sensor in my new soldering workshop:
With that done, I started panelling the bathroom wall:
Behold the chaos, it’s coming together!
Until next Sunday,
- Nick