Rivetting Stuff...

Many boatbuilding jobs take a lot of effort for little visible reward - but this was not one of them!
The Broom uses an overlapping joint to hold the Hull and Deck together. Integral to this is the aluminium section that holds the rubbing strake:

With the existing rivets quickly drilled out, the new section was pre-drilled with evenly spaced holes - carefully calculated to avoid the locations of the old rivets.

It was then a simple matter of offering up the channel, drilling through the holes and popping in an aluminium rivet.


In no time at all the section was fitted - the results far outweighed the effort involved!

Paint and Cradles...

Following on from my previous post, I flatted down the hull with wet or dry and gave it another coat with the roller, laying it off as I went - it was definitely worthwhile. OK - it's not perfect, but most acceptable - I've even had the comment "You really did that by hand...wow" which did bring a glow of satisfaction:-)

I let the hull stand for a couple of weeks so the paint had time to cure and harden off. During this time some cradles were knocked up ready to support the boat when it was turned back over. These were lovingly crafted by my friend and neighbour Tony, (whose vast collection of power tools I have to admit to plundering regularly) - thanks mate!

With the hull paint dry it was time to turn her over and my good lady wife employed her press-gang tactics to 'rustle some muscle' to assist. The whole operation went smoothly (I like to put it down military precision in the planning stage).

The elegant lines of the Broom design are shining through now

One of the next jobs is to replace the aluminium channel which holds the rubbing strake. The original had been removed and long lost (obviously leaving 100+ rivets needing to be drilled out...) An almost perfect match for the section was found from 'Seals+ Direct' and duly ordered.

Luckily the original finishing caps for this were lurking in the box of bits - 1 x for the bow and 2 x for the stern corners. Needless to say, these chrome on brass parts were in pretty bad shape. I looked into the possibility of getting these re-chromed - but this was not really an option due to time and expense. Instead, I cleaned them up, filled the gouges with an epoxy filler, sprayed them with aluminium paint and gave them plenty of coats of lacquer.


So... we got the paint on just in time as it's getting too cold now to get a decent finish - and I'm off to find out about the wonderful world of pop-riveting!