The jobs on the Princess 25 refit are coming along well.

Today it was the turn of making and machining the new oak trims to fit around the boat when the bulkheads and side and headlining are refitted to the inside of the boat.

Also the varnishing is coming along on the galley locker doors and the toilet locker door and along the gas locker lid. Also gluing the Formica to the bulkheads and tirming it up ready to fit the new oak tirms to them once they are in place on the boat.

Once all the trims are made up then comes the long drawn out job of varnishing them all with six coats of varnish.

The start of the week has started with a number of jobs being done on the Princess 25 refit.

The week has started with a number of the smaller items on the refit list. Jobs such as painting and varnishing locker doors and lids. As well as making up new oak trims for main of the panels in the inside of the boat. Such as side lining panel joints and head lining panels as well as the edges and joints of the Formica areas of the boat. Areas such as the joints of the toilet bulkheads, and other such areas around the boat.

Small Jobs take a lot of time and somtimes you can not see the wood for the trees.

As often the case when doing jobs on boats, there are times when you do a number of small jobs that in themselves do not amount to very much. Do make a great deal of difference in the end result.

I had one of those days today where I did a number of small jobs on a number of different boat projects. The jobs are time consuming in that they are difficult little jobs and need a lot of patience to get right and look the part.

Also getting the correct finish on varnish work need the correct environment and patience to get the finish you are looking to get on the final coat.

Another fun job is making up new trims where the old ones are either broken or in some cases missing and having to make them up with just little bits of the old trims where possible.

In the case of the Princess 25 refit the owners wishes to have a white and blue interior with English oak trims throughout. This means having to get rid of all the old trims and replace with oak, lots of bench work to do to get all these new trims made and varnished up the fittied to the new white Formicaed bulkheads.

While this is all going on there are a number of other jobs to do on other clients boats.

It is all change again down at the workshop.

Over the past few days, it has been a time to sort out a lot of little jobs on a number of projects we have underway. However, now we have done them will can get on with some of the bigger jobs we have around the workshop. Today,we are taking delivery of some marine plywood to rebuild the Enterprise dinghy and early next week we will be taking delivery of a log of larch for the new build which we will turn into a new dinghy by the spring.

Also there will be progress made on the Mai-Star II with its new ribs and planks being fitted over the next few weeks and months and the new cabin sides and roof re-instated ready for the new season next year.

So it should be exciting times ahead as always there will be photo updates and dialogue along the way to keep you up to date on the projects as they go along over the next few months. 

Down at the workshop and a list of jobs to do on the client's boats

This week it is a bit drier than last week and now we can get outside on the clients boats that are out side in their different locations around the county. Having spent the last few days doing work on their boat with small interior work that needed doing on the parts of their boat that we had in the workshop to do while the weather was aganist us working outside.

Hopefully now that we have a couple of days of dry weather we can get on with work on their boats where they are. The lists of jobs to do on the boats are very different from boat to boat and will challenge our skills to complete them and we at J-Star enjoy a challenge. Two of the main jobs at the moment are the refits of a Princess 25 and a Hardy Navigator 18 which boat need a great deal of work on to bring them both back to a good condition and ready to take to the high seas again.

As well as these two boats we have a number of smaller dingies to work on to bring them back up to serviceable condition and also to build a new dinghy over the winter. So we are presently busy which is a good sign that the industry is picking up once more.