It's not like I've been doing nothing on the boat. But the progress that has occurred just isn't as exciting right now. I got to a stage where there were eight different things to tackle, and it didn't matter which one, and of course that confused the heck out of me.
During the week I made a trip to Home Depot in search of materials for making a trailer bunk. The trailer I purchased comes with a roller to fit up under a traditional v-shaped bow, but the PMD has transom, and aft of the transom it has a mostly flat bottom, and the roller just wasn't optimal. So I copied PMD builder Erik's solution (he even helped me to find the right replacement bracket) and replaced the roller with a bunk--which is to say, a board covered with indoor-outdoor carpet.
The bracket arrived via UPS -- the terriers alerted the entire county -- and there I was without the rest of what I would need: a piece of pressure-treated 2x6, a couple of bolts for attaching the bunk to the bracket, and some sort of spacers for attaching the bracket to the existing pair of holes where the roller was attached. Extra carpet I already had.
At HD I found a lovely piece of scrap 2X6, pressure-treated, for 51 cents -- my kind of pricing! The bolts were $1.20 each (stainless steel .. it must cost them a lot to take the stains out). I had the choice of hex-head bolts or pan-head bolts and, yes, I chose the wrong ones. The pan-head ones. I'll explain.
This morning I finally got 'round to making the bunk. Sawed the lumber scrap to size ... drilled a pair of holes for the bolts ... used the plunge attachment for my router for the first time in order to create large "countersinks" so the bolt heads wouldn't protrude from the to-be-carpeted bunk service ... and then things went south. I tried threading a nut on the other end of a bolt after poking it through the board. The nuts I have have those nylon inserts, which makes them great for staying put, but means there's a bit of resistance during the threading part. Here I first noticed that there was no way to keep the bolt from turning ... no way to tighten the nut.
Had I bought hex head nuts, I could have used my nifty plunge router to make enough room around the bolt head to allow the use of a socket wrench to hold the bolt whilst I tightened the nut. But no. I got the wrong kind. And Home Depot is so far away (nearly six miles). Going back there would mean the need to drill more deepwater oil rigs, and we don't really want to get into that, do we?
I stared and mumbled and finally looked at those darn pan-head bolts. Underneath the pan head, which is really more of a wok head if you ask me, there's a square nut-looking thing. So of course if I had just made a square hole as part of my little countersink -- not that I have any idea how I could have done that -- then the bolt head would have something to grab onto and I might have been able to get the nuts tight.
I stared some more. And remembered I have a cheap set of files I bought, one of which is just a long pointy square.
I used it to turn the bolt hole into a square, near the surface. Then I used a hammer to enthusiastically encourage the bolts to become well-seated in the new squared-off holes. And I held 'em in with a thumb whilst tightening the nuts. And it worked.
Not optimal. But they should hold. Now the bracket was firmly attached to the 2x6. All I had left to do was cut out some carpet, staple it to the wood, and then mount the bracket onto the trailer.
I only had to start over with the stapling once, after having plunged in to the task without carefully aligning the carpet. I think the carpet will stay, although I'm pretty certain those aren't stainless steel staples I was using, because they didn't cost $3700. Per dozen.
The resulting bracketed bunk looked okay, so now it was time to attach it to the trailer, where the little roller currently languished. The roller fit between a pair of, er, metal pieces, with a bolt running between them acting as an axle. I removed the axle/bolt nut and got that roller outta there, and then test-fit the new bunk bracket. Of course, there was some play (Erik had warned me about this, so I had picked up a big pile of stainless steel washers which I could stack to make spacers, for well under $7 per washer).
I didn't have enough washers.
Finally, looking up in despair, I noticed an old schedule-40 PVC sprinkler pipe stored up on some hooks above the garage door. Spacer material!
A quick hack job -- I mean hacksaw job -- on the pipe and I had a spacer. I put everything together. And I think maybe I have a new trailer bunk -- in no more than three times the duration or the cost that a qualified boat builder would have spent.
Sometimes I think I should stick to what I'm good at. If only I could figure out what this was ...
