Restoring an old companionway: the sliding hatch

This is my first attempt to write a blog post directly from my phone. I am moving around tranquility speaking to my phone and I feel very weird. If somebody was looking at me now would think I’m a total dumbass. Which may be true. Anyway I am here gathering the necessary tools to complete my next task which is to epoxy the top of the sliding hatch.

The two pieces of 1/4 inch plywood have been laminated together with wood glue and clamped down to the hatch frame for one day to get the curvature. I need a drill and I have to find the right size screws so I open my screw container where I keep all the screws I find on board subdivided by length and type. This time I need 10 screws 3/4 inch long to secure the plywood to the frame. The screws are meant to press the laminate down to the frame while the thickened epoxy  sets. I can then remove them and the epoxy will hold the plywood in place. This way I will have a permanent perfectly sealed joint.

A good practice is to wet the surfaces with resin and let it set for 15 minute before mixing epoxy with filler to the consistency of a thick cream and laying it over the ledger. An easy way to do so is to take a ziplock bag and cut one of the lower corner then fill the bag with the epoxy and use it as if it was a pastry bag. Apply epoxy exactly where you need to squeezing the bag and moving along the edge of the frame.

Once the plywood is firmly in place held by the screws it’s time to clear coat both sides of the hatch with epoxy resin, to prevent future intrusion of water into the wood.

After the epoxy cured (12 to 24  hours) the old teak strips can go back in place, having care to number each one to find the better combination. Once the sequence is chosen, we have to work very quickly and mix epoxy and filler to attach the strip to the plywood. I ended up using quite a bit of resin and filler to fit all the pieces.

The epoxy is cured and the whole hatch can be sanded down with a belt sender and the orbital sander to level any high spot. As you see in the picture old weathered teak can come back to the original color once the superficial layer is sanded off.