Malahini in Missouri

Wood Nut · **Posted:** Tue Jan 03, 2012 3:23 pm

Great looking dash!

GRAM-AFLOAT · **Posted:** Tue Jan 03, 2012 3:23 pm

Man, it is going to be hard to match the great woodworking skills I see on this forum. Very impressive, Bob.

vupilot · **Posted:** Tue Jan 03, 2012 7:40 pm

Very nice!

rbrandenstein · **Posted:** Wed Jan 04, 2012 8:19 am

Thanks, all. It was a design idea I had been floating in my head for a long time. I guess great minds think alike, Warren. ;-)

Thursday I am going to see a guy to laser etch the legends into the maple. Here is the font I found (Magneto) that I think fits the boat.

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From what the guy says, the laser will etch a shallow indentation which I plan to fill with colored epoxy.

upspirate · **Posted:** Wed Jan 04, 2012 8:54 am

When I had the plaque done for Glen, they laser etched and coated with some gold stuff(not sure what it was)

Here's a pic....looks better in person:

http://www.boatdesigns.com/images/glen-award.jpg

This was done at a trophy shop

rbrandenstein · **Posted:** Wed Jan 11, 2012 8:48 am

To make legends for my dash switches I decided to laser etch the lettering into the maple and then fill in with brown epoxy. I found a small home based business near where I live which was nice because they were willing to do my small project plus I could go over and watch the whole process.

The etching is done with a laser etcher connected to a PC. We did one word at a time. The etcher has a laser head that is mounted on an arm and can move in the X-Y direction. The area it can cover is about 30" wide by 20" tall. The laser is first positioned over the center of where you want the lettering using X-Y adjustment buttons. Then the depth is adjusted by moving the base up and down. This is needed to focus the laser beam on the surface of the material. The text is then entered into a drawing program using the font that you want (He had the Magneto font.) The image is then just "printed" to the laser. Before printing to the laser the software driver is adjusted for the material (wood > maple) and then power. You don't want to give it too much power or you get excessive burning. It is better to take multiple passes at less power.

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Here is the laser etching my Ignition and Choke labels. These will be cut from the maple and inlaid into the mahogany dash. After the first etch, you manually run the etch two more times. Each run takes a little more material and makes the cut deeper. The laser goes back and forth like an old dot matrix printer advancing from top to bottom. The material does not move, only the laser head and arm.
The same process was used on the cluster.

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Here is the completed etch on the cluster. You can see there is a nice depth to the cut. There was some sort of glitch in the software or the font. The "Bilge" text printed a little higher than the other two legends even though we started each lettering etch on the same horizontal line. Unfortunately, there are no do-overs unless I wanted to make a new panel (no, thank you.)

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Finally, I used epoxy resin colored with brown pigment to fill in the lettering. This turned into more of a challenge than I expected. Tiny bubbles form in the resin and you don't notice it until you try and sand the finish down to bring out the definition of the lettering. The little bubbles get sanded off and collect the maple sanding dust which creates white spots in the lettering. I had to use a jeweler's loupe and dental pick to clean out these spots and refill. It took several passes. To anyone trying this I would recommend you do not sand the lettering but use a razor blade to trim the epoxy down and then hold the blade vertically and use it like a scraper to clean off any additional epoxy. The scraping does not create the dust to collect in the bubble pockets.

Anyway, other than the Bilge being slightly out of alignment, I am pleased with the result.

Roberta Hegy · **Posted:** Wed Jan 11, 2012 8:52 am

That look's really nice!!!!

Roberta

Iggy · **Posted:** Wed Jan 11, 2012 9:03 am

Clever idea. I used tinted epoxy for filling my deck lines, and the bubbles that often formed where a pain in the arse for sure. Not sure if its the chemical reaction, minute wood off-gassing, or from mixing, or something in the filler, but even with a lot of caution you can expect a few bubbles before it cures.

In my case, a bit of white epoxy dust in white-tinted epoxy lines after sanding was hardly noticable. But I can see it being a paint for dark/brown tinted fills.

Cutting it with a razor sounds like a good start, at least for small fills. Wider/heavier lines would not be so easy to cut.

I might go the laser-engraved Stainless Steel Plate route for labelling my switches, now that I see yours!

khundley · **Posted:** Wed Jan 11, 2012 9:14 pm

Sometimes, it's easier to use a wood flour and titebond glue mix for something like that, though it is not as "uniform" a color as tinted epoxy. I have also done this with tinted lacquer sticks used for gap filling. Unfortunately, that can shrink over time, especially if it is very deep. I really like the look of your dash....the maple line and gauge insets really set it apart. Nicely done.

rbrandenstein · **Posted:** Fri Jan 13, 2012 8:57 am

Thanks for the kudos on the dash. I really like how it turned out as well. I won't go into the disaster I had with finishing it. Some epoxy didn't harden properly and then the varnish I put on wouldn't dry. It stayed sticky for days so I ended up stripping the dash down to bare wood, re-staining the mahogany and just using varnish. I skipped the epoxy encapsulation. I'm still working on that. I'd wanted to put the dash into the boat a week ago when the weather was near 60, but I missed that opportunity.

rbrandenstein · **Posted:** Fri Jan 13, 2012 9:04 am

Anyway, on to new things....

It was getting to the point where I wanted to get a motor so I could start fitting and mounting the steering cables, power cables and attaching the controls. I also needed the control box so I could figure out where I would mount it and how to hide it. So much depends on so many other things. I'd been trolling Craigslist for months looking for the diamond in the rough. I honed in on Mercury because there seem to be more of them for sale and parts are available, even for the older ones. I went and looked at a few motors and most were the "rough" and not the diamond. The other problem was getting the right size. There were several 50hp which I thought was too small and then there were 85hp, which I thought was to much. If I didn't have a trailer, it might have been easier to buy a boat, motor and trailer and throw away the boat!

Anyway, last weekend, a 1975 65HP Mercury showed up on Craigslist and after an hour drive into middle of Missouri, I bought it. The title says 1976, but the serial number denotes a 1975 model.

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Here's the beast laying on its side on my dolly. The power head looked in reasonable shape. The owner said it ran well and was a strong performer. I'm going on faith here so wish me luck. Missouri is the "Show Me" state, but I didn't live up to my state's credo.

One reason we couldn't test it was that it was off the boat. In addition, the lower unit needs a little work before it can be mounted and started. They had apparently hit something and broke out the plastic nut that holds the whole propeller shaft and shift assembly in the lower unit. So, I needed to order a few parts to get it back together. Along with the nut, I got some O rings and a water pump rebuild kit. Since the lower unit is off, you might as well restore some critical pieces.

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Here's the lower unit disassembled on my workmate. The ring in the middle is the plastic nut that was stripped out of the housing on the left. Everything seems to be there and in reasonable shape. I also found a service manual for this model on ebay which I will need to get it all back together. After it gets back together, I plan to mount it and attempt to fire it up.

Since I want it to look nice, I will also sand and spray paint all the black metal parts to make it look shiny and new. The plastic housing is pretty clean and the decals are mostly intact. A little cleaning and it should look much better.

jeffh · **Posted:** Fri Jan 13, 2012 9:39 am

Nice find on the engine. You could have easily gone with the 85HP. I'm sure it was much lighter than mine which weighs 320lbs. BTW, I love the dash. Back in the HOT summer, I varnished my dash with Interlux Perfection Plus. It was a total disaster! I had never had such problems with varnish before. I really wanted to use something that would dry clear and glossy like my hull and deck. I'm sure it was the heat. I started sanding it with my RO sander and wound up going all the way to bare wood. I did not re-encapsulate mine either. I re-stained and used some off the shelf Helmsman Spar Varnish. In the next couple of months, I'm going to finally sand it again and use the same kind of varnish I used on my kayak. I was originally going to take it and have it clear coated at an auto shop like the rest of the boat, but that is too much trouble and probably expensive.

upspirate · **Posted:** Fri Jan 13, 2012 3:23 pm

If you want to try and run it w/o the lower unit , you can attach a hose to the water pick up tube in the mid-section....I've seen that done.

If it's been sitting a while, you probably need to clean the carbs

rbrandenstein · **Posted:** Sun Jan 15, 2012 9:58 pm

I can see how you could run an engine like that, but with the cold weather here, I don't want to mess with hoses, etc. I'll just have to wait. I'm sure I'll have clean the carbs, etc. Hopefully, most of the stuff is in reasonable condition. I've repaired the hub and rebuilt the water pump.

Things have been busy. The dash varnish is finally hard and I was able to mount the dash. However, the weather is cold so I had to revert to heaters and tarps to get the pieces warm enough to set the epoxy.

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Here's my set up to keep the dash area warm.

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Dash installed. You can see the inlays for the ignition and choke switches.

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With the dash in place, I mounted the steering wheel and electrical components. I can now start the wiring. Lots of stuff to do. This is getting exciting. It seems I've been sanding and varnishing forever. Now I'm putting things together. Woo Hoo.

jeffh · **Posted:** Sun Jan 15, 2012 10:23 pm

It looks fantastic and it pisses me off at the same time

Glen-L.com

Malahini in Missouri

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