Diamond Jim

Aquanet specifically of just any cheap hair spray?

A generous friend has given me a pair of Armstrong ports which will do the job perfectly.

I’m building a 22’ daysailer with a fin ballast keel. It’ll have buoyancy tanks in the ends. PLanning on using one of the plastic access panels such as Beckson, Bomar, Tempress... in the bulkhead. Which brand do we like?

I’d like to have the pedestal lock in its positions so the driver can stay upright.

What masking tape will tolerate a couple of weeks of sun and rain and still be removable?

Russell Brown has published a small book on rolling Perfection. Get it.

Teak is silly expensive. There are other tropical hardwoods that are adequately durable and have similar appearance and much lower cost. Garapa and Cumaru are a couple. You could do your washboards for maybe $50.

Climber’s dyneema slings can be a tidy solution.

That might help.

In the seventies, I built an icebox. Double walled, 2” gap, 3/8” fir ply, foam-in-place foam. Glassed inside and out. It held ice for a week in Maine. Still doing the job. Today, I’d probably use different materials.

Sunlight bleaches cherry. In my last house, I had a cherry floor by a sunny window. It bleached to medium yellow in thirty years. Maybe today’s finishes have more effective UV filtration than the floor poly I used in 1984. I hope so, as the new house also has cherry floor.

I did the sheerstrake of a glued lapstrake pulling boat in 6mm sapele, varnished. Looked quite elegant.

Good quality plywood is made with a considerable variety of face veneers. Okoume is used a lot because it's at the low end of the price range and lightweight, but there are many other very attractive species. Check with your local vendors.

Part of the reason for the variety of techniques being proposed here is that folks are putting a different value on lightness. If it doesn’t matter, you’ll use a lot of 3/4” plywood and if it matters a lot, you’ll start with nomex honeycomb. I’ve found it useful to have in the back of my mind the price I’d pay to save a pound. One way to arrive at this would be to ask how much the value of the boat would be diminished if it were 1000 lbs. overweight. Divide by 1000 and that’s the marginal value of a pound saved. I’d guess values of $100/lb. for a light foiler, $50 for sporty things and $10 for a 4KSB. Factor in a value for your time and you have the basis for evaluating alternative approaches.

The good grades of plywood are very different from the cheap stuff. 6mm would be five equal plies rather than the three plies of lauan underlay or fir. A well done fillet has structural value and is tidy, light and easy to clean. Get Russel Brown's book on epoxy techniques. The chapter on filleting is excellent.