Sunday, August 5, 2012

Out of the tube!

The days continue to be a flurry of activity above and below decks. The engine has been micro-nudged into position and left alone a couple of days to sit just to see if it will settle different on it's mounts(it didn't) and we decided to finally lock it down and call it home. He got it to where a 3 ths feeler gauge would slip in anywhere around the coupler without any difference in drag. Today I custom cut the bolts and put them in the flanges and connected it to the prop shaft. It might not mean much to outsiders but it kinda means another milestone has been accomplished here.

I have spent most of my time since my last post down below decks crawling around what I would describe with a geek reference as Jeffries Tubes. Star Trek fans know what the technical function of these are but were actually used as some sort of pause in the story for some random dialog exchange. The difference here is that the tubes in my ship are not nearly big enough for another person to have a conversation with, and also if a passer-by outside was listening close enough all they would hear from me would have been a random dialog involving alot of swearing. I have bruises that make me look like a battered spouse.

I finally think I properly re-coated all the odd surfaces and corners where I continuously stuck my head, elbow, knee or butt (pick one or multiples) and made it out of there. I also managed to hang the random lengths of tubing, clamps and exhaust hardware, tacked up a new copper bonding strip(ham radio thing), as well as tidied up a few wire cables on the way out. This tube is very schmick now! Richard tossed a bunch of crap into the lazarette (my way in) so I cant wiggle down there again.

On to the next project! We are getting close.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

schmick, great word! Stylish, elegant and efficient in design, perfect application or device.

Unknown said...

Great adventure as well!

Unknown said...

I have no idea where I picked that up. I've been saying it alot lately. It just fits for some reason.