Friday, January 25, 2013

Fly bridge bolsters finished

As we mentioned previously, we removed the Naugahyde bolsters that run along the top of the starboard side of the bridge to get more access to the space below where we are going to install new control cables. This is what it looked like when we first got them off.

After taking these things off, we cleaned all the rust and grime off the fiberglass and waxed it. We know. No one's ever going to see it after the bolsters are remounted but we like to know that it was done right.

The long section shown at the bottom of the photo had burst along one side. All of the little steel staples had rusted away.

As we said in the last blog post, we also removed the port side bolsters and took everything home for rehab. It took four applications of Smith's CPES over four evenings to bring the wood back. We used 3/8-inch stainless staples to reinforce the Naugahyde where it was fastened to the plywood backing around the edges of all of the bolsters. It took two of us to carefully stuff the foam back and staple that one long bolster where the old staples had given away.

Then we took over the kitchen counter to thoroughly and clean each piece and it was amazing how much grime was on them after 32 years. We finished up with two applications of ArmorAll, although we had to soak the ArmorAll bottle in hot water before we could use it because it was frozen in our garage.

This little extra job was worth the effort. The bolsters look brand new and are ready to be reinstalled. In the meantime, they are being stored on our washer and dryer. With the cold weather, we're beginning to run out of space inside to store our various project parts.



Like everything else on this boat, one project uncovers another. To get one of the curved bolsters off, we had to disconnect the marine VHF radio. We never liked the way we had to originally fastened it to a piece of plywood that some idiot had jammed up under the helm and attempted to screw to the fiberglass, so that came out too.  We took some measurements and made some drawings to see if we couldn't fabricate a better mounting method.  We'd also like to make room to mount a second radio (amateur 144 MHz and 440 MHz transceiver) next to or under the marine radio.  That's proving to be more difficult than we thought, but we have some ideas.

Next weekend (January 26-27) we've taking a break from the boat to visit the Clark Museum in Williamstown Mass. Even for dedicated boat nuts like us, sometimes it's better to have fun doing something else.

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