Lining Out

It's been a long time since I've posted an update and we've been pretty busy on the boat! Once the spray foaming was all trimmed back and cleaned up it was time for us to start thinking about lining out the inside of the boat.

The first board goes on.

What a change it made to start working on something that we would actually see! Up until now everything had been stuff that would be hidden or covered by something so it didn't matter if something wasn't cut quite square, or if you drilled a hole in the wrong place, you just ignored it and carried on. Not so with the lining!

Subsequent boards go on quickly after the first.

A lot of boats are lined in faced ply, normally oak because it looks good but is cheaper than oak planks. Then the edges of the boards are covered with trim to tidy everything up. This has the advantage of being relatively cheap, fast, and easy to fit.

Windows were tricky, but looking good.

So for the cabin sides we decided not to use ply, and went for 9x1" planed pine boards instead. These have the advantafe of looking really good, and that's about it. Everything else about it a negative; it's harder to fit, slower to fit, and relatively expensive. However I hope you'll agree the finished effect was worth it! We certainly think it was.

We had to allow space for the window catch (which you can't really see in this photo)

The hardest part was starting. Once the first board is up then you can use that to line up the one on top and use that one to line up the one next to it. If the first board isn't level then you'll get a strange sinking feeling as you walk through the boat! The old adage of "measure twice, cut once" became "measure, offer up, check, measure again, offer up again, check, ok hold it there and I'll- no it's moved, up a little..." I think you get the picture.

The front bulkhead gets the angles cut.

Round windows are not the easiest thing to cut out of straight planks of wood, but with some careful measuring, a floorboard saw, and a cardboard template, it wasn't ipossible. We just had to go slow and keep on the line when sawing, keep the saw vertical to avoid having a champhered edge, and ignore our aching arms!

Front bulkhead all tidied up.

Because the timber on the sides of the cabin was put up in full boards, the timber on the bulkheads had to be planed down to fit. As the cabin sides lean in you're essentially making two sides of a triangle with the timber on the bulkhead and the cabin side (with the cabin side being the hypotenuse) so each board was about 2mm out, which becomes pretty noticeable when each board pushes the difference out by another 2mm. Therefore each board had to be cut to match the angle, offered up, marked for the difference that needed to come off the top, planed down, and cut to length. The front bulkhead took two of us about half a day, which considering there surface area covered, was pretty slow work.

Looking down the cabin towards the bathroom.

Once the sides were on it was time to tackle the ceiling. This was definately a two person job, holding a 5 metre board up above your head and trying to mark accurately for cuttingand drilling was not the easiest of tasks, but that didn't stop me trying! Again, the first board was the hardest as it needed to be centred and straight down the centre line of the boat otherwise it would look wrong. Again it was a case of offer up, check, adjust etc... but once it was in place the other full board went up quickly alongside it.

The ceiling starts to go up.

The boards that meet the cabin sides were a little more tricky because thy had to be cut to the right width to ensure they met the side and made a good fit. If you cut off too much then that'd be a whole board wasted, and if you didn't cut off quite enough then it's fiddly to take off a little bit with a saw. Also the cuts had to be made at an angle to allow for the angle that the cabin sides come in at otherwise you'd see a gap in the corner where they meet. Fortunately some careful cuts with the circular saw resulted in a pretty good fit.

The bedroom.

Under the front deck we reused some old tongue and groove floring that was in the boat when we bought it but was pretty tatty so we didn't really want it anywhere on show, but needed something to protect our heads from bashing the steelwork when we were under there!

Under the front deck, old T&G gets a new lease of life!

Under the gunwale we are using OSB (oriented strand board) which is cheap, easy to fit, and looks pretty good. Behind this we are running the 240v electrics, and some of the 12v cable runs.

The view from the front door. Note OSB in place (bottom right).

We can't fix all ofthe OSB in place until we have the floor down (which we are hopefully buying on the weekend)  so that's why there is no competely finished lining photo, but we'll get there!

Again I have several people to thank for their help getting all the lining up. John for coming out in the cold December weekends, my dad for his help with the cabin sides, and Luke for giving up a couple of weekends to come and give me a hand. It's taken a long time, but hopefully you'll agree it's looking good!