Hi Ron
I see you and Marionette had a fabulous year, congratulations on your successes. Hope 2017 will be as kind.
You must have your hand on the Dolphin Community pulse and sensed I was restarting again some work on Remnant - other duties have prevented my intended efforts.... About a week ago I had a window of time and wanted to work on an item I could complete. My next major step is tackling the cockpit area but that will require more attention than available now, so I wanted to proceed on fabrication of the new toe rail and bow assembly.
Obviously that would require verification of the original shear to deck construction along with several other items I needed to know for sure to avoid the expense of trial and error construction. Attached sketch shows the original shear and toe rail construction.
The bow deck framing was not part of original. As far as I can see the 2 ply fore deck was self supporting. Also the stanchions were only partly supported by the shear with most of the bearing on the deck. I opted to add more support at their locations. Also attached are several pictures of the original conditions and include some or the work completed thus far. You will see where I deviated from original.
Now to the toe rail and bow assembly fabrication.
The bow assembly was fabricated from 3" thick stock. I don't have that so opted to build up from my 2" stock on hand. Photo of glued up bow piece awaiting completion.
The fabrication and splicing of the toe rail is a challenge. Original working stock was at least 14 ft with one main splice near midships. See photo of that splice, it is quite impressive and the fit up was perfect.
The original builders were skilled. My stock is only 8 ft long so splice locations will increase. In addition if I try to match the original splice the overlap of stock length will only add to the splice count. I'll forward the final splice detail when I work that out. I have made a sample piece of toe rail from scrap and can say its going to be an unforgiving piece of work. From 1-1/2 x 3" stock the first order is to cut the rabbit on the base to accommodate the 2 ply deck, next slope cut end to end to match height change and finally bevel from top to base to finish out with 3/4" top and 1-1/4" base - all the while keeping the splices compatible. Will see how this goes....
Hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas.
Regards,
Winston Phillips
