Autumn workshop blog. 1

In the workshop – words, pictures and video.

Blog time : it’s late November 2022 and iv’e finished my heavy autumn work in the garden until I start planting up the containers for our spring display. We even had a couple of days when the sun shone for a while so I was able to heave a board of plywood out of the workshop and cut some parts for the first of my winter projects which is to make the Pathfinder’s cockpit into a large sleeping space – i’m going to film that, photograph it and talk about it in the next autumn blog post.

For now though I just want to talk about my first try at making simple stainless steel parts, what I learnt from the actual process of doing it and what I found out by talking to my mate down in NZ who is a superb engineer and fabricator. For this first autumn blog post from the workshop I also decided to slow down a bit and take the time to film most things that I did , both good and bad, and then edit that into the video which iv’e added to the end of the post. Even with just a few posts now on video iv’e learnt some useful basic tricks which allow me to produce video segments of about 10 minutes ; that seems about right for now as they can be single subject video’s that don’t get too complex but do seem to benefit from multiple film takes and attempts at voice-overs.

Jumping forward a bit I did succeed in making one simple piece for the boat – a stainless steel ‘strap’ that joins the gaff throat halyard to the throat of the sail and which pivots in the gaff jaws. It’s made and if I was really desperate I could use it even though it’s not particularly well finished or even the right grade of steel ( 304 rather than 316). Since then iv’e ordered some different pieces of 316 stainless steel stock because I intend to have a second try at that part, have a similar piece to make which will be a backing plate for the bowsprit thru-bolts and then a whole set of pieces ( 12 parts) which will be support ‘tabs’ for my new cockpit covering boards.

The interesting thing and a mistake of sorts is that I treated my stainless steel just as if it was a piece of stiffer timber – in that I went about the job in the same way as I would with a length of timber : that is to say that I marked the piece, punched and drilled the holes, cut the length, shaped it and then at the end tidied it all up and had a go at basic sanding and polishing. My good mate Alan tells me that my process was the wrong way around and that it pays to do the polishing first, the cutting next and the drilling of holes last – so that’s what i’m going to do next time around. In between now and then I also hope to have a new tool to use as I intend to buy a combination bench grinder and sanding belt – mainly for shaping the ends of the multiple pieces I have to make next.