Well, been up to a few things over the last week. First of all, I've been carrying on in the evenings with my worktop project. When my parents moved back here from New Zealand earlier this year, my brother put about 30m of old rimu (native NZ wood) floorboards into the container with my parents furniture. There seems to be an endless supply of reclaimed wood underneath my house back at home. I'm thinking of using this to make some kitchen worktops, but thought I'd have a practice run making a top for the old chest of drawers that came with the boat. As I don’t have a workbench on IRIS, I thought I'd use the chest of drawers as a base to build it on. Having selected the least warped pieces of wood, I worked from the back fastening the planks in place. They are tongue and groove, so they are glued along those joins, while I've used coach screws into holes drilled underneath to fasten the planks to the chest of drawers.

These two pictures show the process of building up the worktop.





Once the glue had dried, I set to with a hand plane. I found this incredibly satisfying (once I'd got the hang of it) and happily spent most of a friday night creating a huge pile of shavings. This reminded me of my grandfather, who was a carpenter/builder - he would've loved all this. Hope he can see it from wherever he is ;-)




The wood didn't always plane cleanly, and after some online discussions with my friend Kev (woodworking consultant to the stars), it seems like its just a 'feature' of the wood and the way it was cut from the tree. Remember kids, a bad workman always blames his tools, but a good consultant will never fail to blame the materials.

This is the finished article, once I'd used some Danish oil (good that your country can produce at least one useful thing eh Tobias ;-) and a coat of wax. I really like the finished effect of using this reclaimed wood, the grain and colour looks lovely.



A more modest project was to make some fenders to keep the sides of the boat away from the jetty. As I'm now using the side doors to get in and out this seemed like a good idea, as the doors would not open unless I pushed the boat away from the dock each time I wanted to go out. When I was down in Hampshire at the specialist that looks after my car to get something checked, I asked the guys at the tyre place next door if I could take a couple of discarded tyres away to use. I chose a pair of 205/50x16" Dunlops, selected especially for their high performance characteristics, and not simply because they were on top of the pile. Turns out that 225 wide tyres would've been better, but I'm not changing them now :-). Still, not bad for ten minutes work.





I've also added a CO2 sensor (to avoid the big sleep) and a smoke detector. I now feel happier leaving the heater on overnight. It was a little chilly in the mornings without this; I took these pictures on the morning of friday the 3rd November at about 8:00am. Nice eerie effect of the mist on the water.





The bathroom project has been coming along slowly; I can't find anyone locally who has the time to fit a new toilet, so I guess I'll do it myself. One of the first jobs was to make the bathroom door a decent width. This helped pass another friday evening - you make your own entertainment on the river.






Finally a word of thanks to our sponsor, Brian Gatt, without whose camera this would not be possible (did you want it back?).