The weather was very hot today, the weather station recorded 32 Celsius during the afternoon so work continued on the preparations, but slowly. The next task is to build a box to hold the lamp oil bottles and I decided to make one that will hold nine bottles in a 3 x 3 matrix.

This is the spacer around which the box will be built and here I have marked the centers of the nine holes.

I used a 35mm forstner bit to start the holes on one side and then turned the spacer over to complete the holes from the other side. This means that the edges of the holes are nice and clean without any tear out.

The result is not too bad.

I checked that the bottles fitted before continuing.

Before I took a bit of a break I painted the inside of the 2 x 2 bottle holder that I made yesterday.

The outside of the box was done next as you can see here.

The spacer will be fitted inside the box like this. Or something like that.

The 2 x 2 box got a coat of colour.

And I made the lid for the lamp oil box

I messed up one of the corners of the lid and what you see here is me trying to repair it. We'll see if that worked tomorrow when I continue the work on the box.

The Next Day...

Anther task that has been waiting for sometime is a retaining line for the pin that holds the tiller in place.

Firstly I drilled a second hole the same size as the original.

Then a very strong line was attached to the pin at one end and a small stainless screw at the other.

The pin can now be stowed and I no longer have to worry about dropping the pin into the water.

Here is the tiller mounted with the new retaining line.

Now, you may ask, why a second hole? Why not just use the existing hole?

That's a good question and the answer is that the second hole is for the spare pin.

Now if only I can remember where I put it!

The Next Day...

The hinges and latch for the box arrived in the post, so after the second coat of Burgundy paint had dried sufficiently they were added. Here is the latch.

The hinges...

And the inside.

Not too shabby bearing in mind that this is going to be kept in one of the cockpit lockers and thus going to get banged about a bit.

It looks quite nice to me.

Time for a cup of tea.