MiToS re-built/fit- versilcraft Mystery43

[rafiki_]

Many thanks for the update again Vas. I've taken so many hats off to you I have now run out

Cockpit looks good, and the hull is superb. Galley furniture looks a "proper job" too, well done.

 

[MarieK]

I missed this update.

Inspirational stuff VAS - cant wait to see some paint on her.

 

[Robg71]

Great to see, really starting to take shape Vas

 

[vas]

Apologies for the late update but double shift work and family is killing me...
Luckily wife and kids go to Crete for a fortnight this Sunday and I can work uninterrupted till I drop!

Now then,

lower helm hatch is this one (in case someone likes/wants one) Alloy, v.well made in Istanbul. under 200euro.

Had to built the edging down to the lining level so that I can upholster both the edge and the lining again after cutting a hole.


Galley refit, went really well (except for the fridge but more about it later).

Remember the integrated sink and hob thing in very heavy gauge SS had four nice holes drilled so that PO could secure (unsuccessfully I may add) the dish drier. What the holes were successful though was in letting water down the cabinet and making a mess of it. George had to rebuilt half of it!
So got the guy who fixed the stanchion bases to weld these four holes and took me the best part of a morning to grind the welds, sand and finally polish them down to almost invisible. Actually 2 are impossible to spot, one is difficult and one is rather easy as there's not enough weld and there's tiny recess there.
Few pics to show the before and after at various stages of polish.
Hole in place:

After the welds:

Lightly sanded weld. Note some issues with electrolysis around the area:

Details of the repaired areas:

and the overall view of the assembly:

I carefully cleaned and polished the taps, renewed the rubber seal/washer in them and got them in place with a bit of sink bedding silicone I had around.

I also fully dismantled and sanded/cleaned/primed/painted the hob tray.

Cleaned and polished all the bits but I overdid the hob cover and managed to remove some of the chrome plating. During the winter I'll get a new load of bits for chrome plating to the guy in Athens and be done with.

Now all back in place wired and plumbed. No drain as Alekos is still working there and I cannot fit the skinfitting yet.

In order to do all that, I had to finish with all the upholstering around the area. Now I'm ready for the sofa.

Fridge was working fine when standalone in the salon, now stuffed in place with a cabinet all around it, is simply pathetic!
Due to the placement of the evaporator and PC fan on the top at the back, I'm thinking of cutting a larger hole on the worktop and built a recess with the wall plugs and a grill for the hot air to exit. ATM I've simply moved the furniture it fits in a bit so that there's a gap of 50-60mm all around, but I have to say that I'm still not impressed at all. Will investigate further as I bent a couple of pipes a bit in order to shift the evaporator and fan 30mm towards the door and I'm afraid I'm restricting Freon movement.

exhaust risers arrived, not spent any time down there as yet so they're just soaking up the sun on the aft deck...

Also managed to upholster the second bed in the portcabin and put everything together. All pipework is checked, secured in place and ready to go.

Decided to fit and sort out the heads flooring and finish off the tiling and furniture in there. One of the issues I had was forming the "collector"/drain for the elevated shower floor

Too knackered to continue with the teak decking on the heads, will try tomorrow.

cheers

V

 

[MarieK]

I guess its these little jobs like sanding and painting the gas hob that just eat time and difficult to plan for.

Keep it going, nearly there now

 

[vas]

me again

plenty to report, not much time though, so will be brief and let the pics show the work

On the painting front, happy to report that all hull and superstructure are currently filled, sanded, and primer applied with spray gun.
Over the next week Alekos will be sanding, touching up with filler small details and hopefully before the end of next week hull will be sprayed RAL7001 grey as planned:

stbrd side sanded ready for priming:

Alekos working:

primed:

port side primed (had a bit of rain after that (was last w/e)

Touching up the chines:

and superstructure:

Most of my time was spent in the heads sorting them out, finishing off tiling with these mosaic tiles (20x20mm) and grouting. Technology has progressed since the time I did some mosaic tiling 15yrs ago, and the new superflex epoxy glues and grouts are a treat to work with and the end result is pretty professional. Well pleased with it.

As per the other thread on teak decking, I got hold of the real thing (as per JFMs suggestions) and epoxied teak on all 5 panels I wanted. Currently have caulked only two of them, need some cooler weather to do the rest. This is my test bed for the teakdecking of the rest of MiToS next spring, so wanted to find what works and whatnot. Seems that I got things ok, although on the larger areas I'll choose smaller seams (me thinks 6mm is a bit too much - and takes LOADS of caulking!#
I used 6mm gaps mainly because I only had 6X50 screws lying around in large quantities to use as support/spacers. I did cut the teak in straight orthogonal strips no groves to be used as spacers.

So the decking first:

epoxy priming and then gluing. It was a three stage process, first test fit, get the screws in place to hold them all up, then remove, prime and glue clamping in place.

all ready epoxied and waiting for caulking

left it for 4 days to cure and removed all masking tape

and sanded it with 80grit as suggested but I only did a light sanding and will have to go for a second more serious round once everything is finished #grout and all bits of dirt were down there whilst I was working on the bulkheads.

since I had the sole of one of my working pair of timberlands failing, I used the caulking to glue the sole back to the shoe. Note the design conscious selection of clamps properly matching the orangy strip in the shoe (not to mention the matching chisel!)
Needless to say they work perfectly! Well impressed with TDS SIS440.

Main heads look like that now:

got to run and catch a coach to Athens, to meet the family coming back to Athens from Crete tomorrow. Later

cheers

V.

PS. Caught by the 20pic limit, so more when I'm back

 

[jfm]

Great stuff. The primed hull looks stunning. We are all on edge of our seats here awaiting the first pictures of her painted with top coat.

The teak/caulking looks fantastic. Mosaic tiles, Hansgrohe taps, white caulked teak - this is my spec!

 

[longjohnsilver]

Looking fab Vas. I love your teak work and the mosaic also. It's all coming on a treat.

 

[SLC]

Being new here I had not seen this thread until Sunday and have read every page since, fascinating.

What can I say other than 'brilliant'.

 

[rafiki_]

The hull looks fantastic now Vas. What an incredible difference! Love the teak work, that will look really special, and the heads too. Brilliant progress Vas.

 

[petem]

Great stuff. The primed hull looks stunning. We are all on edge of our seats here awaiting the first pictures of her painted with top coat.

+1 to wot JFM says! Awesome!

 

[Prhperio]

Love that teak... Superb job

 

[wakeup]

Tremendous stuff. Hull looks great, bow thruster tunnel fairings look original and proper.

Shower looks good, I even think retaining the sink looks right rather than fit a new one, something I would have probably thrown out if it were me prior to seeing it re-furbed.


Looking forward to the top coat shots.

 

[Firefly625]

excellent V, looking great, your teak work first class.

anyone else thinking battleship grey with black fittings might look quite good....?!

 

[vas]

thanks for the kind comments, yes it's coming along nicely (and it's about time before I collapse out of exhaustion...)

Teak does indeed look good, although as I said I'll probably go thinner and smaller seams on the decks next spring.

Heads are also nicely detailed and that's one of my problems. Having practically redesigned the lot (remember heads weren't even there in the first place!) I had to go through designing the core bit, built the bulkheads, get the plumbing, equipment on, fit them properly, then tile whilst getting the detailing right. Just to give you an idea, the bloody ceiling on the main heads took me more than two days thinking, organizing, getting the frames to support the alloy sandwich panels, make the mocks for the panels, cut the panels, test fit them, decide on the placement of the two cantalupi lights and the presence sensor for the BMS and finally get them in place. All that is done without and sanding or cutting in the cabins/heads. Which means on a good day up to 50times up and down the narrow steps to the aft deck That's excellent exercise for my legs but can be a bit too much tbh

Great stuff. The primed hull looks stunning. We are all on edge of our seats here awaiting the first pictures of her painted with top coat.

The teak/caulking looks fantastic. Mosaic tiles, Hansgrohe taps, white caulked teak - this is my spec!

yep, exactly, although I chickened out and got the grey caulk (very bright tbh and not much different from white I'd expect) to match my brilliant grey (luce gray or something like that in IT) grout by Kerakoll

Tremendous stuff. Hull looks great, bow thruster tunnel fairings look original and proper.

Shower looks good, I even think retaining the sink looks right rather than fit a new one, something I would have probably thrown out if it were me prior to seeing it re-furbed.

true the sink was in a rather sorry state (must find a pic as removed with all the coats of paint all around it as well!) and tbh polishing ss and repairing holes was a first for me as well. But turned out to be more than good enough for the rebuilt and keeps a bit more of the original character of Versilcraft

excellent V, looking great, your teak work first class.

anyone else thinking battleship grey with black fittings might look quite good....?!

me

RAL 7001 grey with off black fittings, windscreen frames and top helm assembly. Ah, and a spot of white on the salon sides and lower helm roof to brighten it up.
Mind if it doesn't turn as I like, it's easy enough to redo on the spot or next year (always worried that some of the repairs may create small patches that will need extra attention, hence not going for awlgrip paints this time but only spend good money on the preparation work and am using a good enough but not exceptional top coat)


One last messy job that I was postponing like for ever was the salon sliding doors. When rebuilding the salon floor and the aft deck I noticed that the main iroko beam that the frame sits on was rotted in the middle of the opening. So last week decided to have a go at removing the whole lot. Took me the best part of an afternoon and a few kilos of sweat to remove the second fixed glazing, undo all the screws and following a lot of head scratching and swearing to get the frame out. In retrospect, doorframe was assembled as a whole (not square, but slanted on the side pillars) and fitted in place with a thin bead of silicone, whereas I thought it was done in steps and was finding difficult to get the first one out. OK, I wont discuss how it was secured now, but took me another morning to clear off all the mess and assess the situation. I'm very much tempted to get my window guy to do a new set of doors again, two fixed on the side and two sliding in the middle and get them in the right grey RAL to match the rest of the hull. Current one may be just about recoverable but frame has a couple of coats of white paint (brushed on!) and massive amounts of silicone. Any easy way to remove silicone btw???

Following pics show the mess produced when chiseling the whole frame out which apparently wasn't as bad as it looked originally. New piece of iroco cut from the leftovers of the toe-rail capping, and matched the curvature of the aft deck. All epoxied in place unfortunately iroco piece was around 150mm short of the 2500mm length of the opening. However on the badly rotted port side (where George had reconstructed the whole frame and skin of the pillar) I ended up removing some of the timber on the outer column piece and rebuilt the whole construction in steps (should finish tomorrow but not got any good pics now to post)

Stbrd to port the support beam for the door frame

next pic you can see that there's a top slice of ply (completely disintegrating!) on top of the iroko. I guess it was to get the flat surface on which the door frame sits without a hell of sanding iroko...

a fair amount of manual work to get all the old iroko beam out (in chips...)

cleaned up all the mess. Note (not quite easy though) that the piece removed belonged to the superstructure which I assume was built separately and then glued/bolted onto the hull when ready. So there was another beam (more substantial) underneath

new beam in place following a layer of thicken epoxy and mat to bed them all in and link to the aft deck:

stbrd detail to the side wall:

more to come at the end of the week with transom and hull hopefully painted (although wind picked up today and I'm not sure how Alekos is going to deal with that)

cheers

V.

 

[RIN]

Loved the two posts this week with the teak decking and the priming. As regards silicone, I have used a proprietary silicon sealant remover before together with lots of scraping with some success although the silicone I removed was not overpainted.

I hope the wind dies down and you can post some pics of the painted hull soon.

 

[KevB]

Absolutely thrilling to see how it's progressing. Hats off to you Vas for being able to see what she could become and having the determination and expertise to achieve it.
So looking forward to seeing her painted.

Amazing progress.

Thanks for the updates.

 

[MapisM]

thanks for the kind comments

You must be joking, V.
Thanks to you for taking the time, on top of all your hard work, to update the most memorable building thread ever. :encouragement:
That's all I have to say about that.

 

[symondo]

i wish i had the; time, the money, the motivation, the weather and the skills to do something of this magnitude - it looks awesome and no doubt a finished product will be something to be incredibly proud of

 

[MarieK]

Do we have paint?