Best of 2008

I saw this on another blog I read and thought it was a great idea so here it is, the best of 2008

Soldering in the screens

I had some time this weekend so back at the port lights. I cut the bronze screens to fit the port lights using a Sharpie to mark the outline. I decided to do this solder work over the stove so the exhaust vent would allow me to work inside and vent the smoke outside. This is a pain staking process, heat the bronze ring only so as not to melt the screen and make sure the screen is not floating, it needs to be touching the ring so it will hear up as well. I used a little flux. This is not the prettiest solder job that I have ever done, but it should hold. I had earlier thought I might just epoxy the new screens in, unsure of the end result I went with the original method solder. I have since herd from fellow Seabreeze owner Art Hall and he used epoxy then painting the epoxy silver to look like solder and had success with this method. I am thinking of putting a little bead of clay ( the kind used to plug cracks in old houses) to cover up the solder. I might just try on this year to see how clay holds up in the sea air. I don’t really need to, it would be just for looks. To finnish this project a made some knotting and used it as pull strings. I made a long strand then cut and melted the ends in the length that I needed.
Time spent: 8 hours

Port lights

This weekend I thought I would tackle the bronze screens that go in the 6 port lights on Snowfish. I had earlier removed the old corroded screens and had made an attempt at soldering in the new bronze one. This attempt failed because I did not clean the surface so the solder could stick. So yesterday I picked up 2 wire wheels that fit into a drill, I thought I would try this out for $6, what a deal and it worked perfect. I just clamped the drill down, used a wood clamp to hold it on. So now they are all clean and I will cut some more screen and go for the solder this week. Kurt