Steam Up

With the teak deck margins laid, its time to look at how to steam the main deck strakes.

Each strake is 45mm wide with a 5 x 5mm rebate down one edge. At the mid-deck point and further aft, its possible to apply the set to the strake by hand - except you need a few more hands to be able to clamp it down and then fix it with glue and screws.

The fore-deck requires much more of a bend, so steaming seems the only way forward.

Scratching around the junk-yard which is my garden and garage; an old plumbers roof-rack storage tube was located along with some old blankets and curtains. Some gaffer tape from Maplin and the lagging is easily wrapped around the tube to keep the heat in.

To connect the wallpaper steamer, a short 1/4 BSP adaptor was machined up and fitted to one end of the tube arrangement. Two supports were fitted inside the tube to support the strakes and keep them out of the condensate while they bake.

The test firing was successful with only a couple of minor mods required for production use. And don't forget to unwind all the cable from the extension lead to stop it from overheating. The wall paper steamer is about 2KW and draws about 8 amps...

[Now Playing: "Steam" by Peter Gabriel]