Plastic Classic Forum

Just finished making my v-berth hatch. Not varnished yet.

Gorgeous!

Looks awesome - how did you build it?

It's mahogany sides with plywood top for a base. Then a layer of fiberglass over all that. Next I cut thin rosewood strips from some scraps I obtained, 1/4" on sides, 1/8" on the top. Attached the sides first with rosewood dust thickened epoxy. Trimmed the rosewood strips for the top to fit. Arranged the strips, then used a bed of rosewood thickened epoxy to attach the strips on top. Spread more thickened epoxy over the top to fill the small cracks between some of the strips. Once the epoxy hardened, I used a belt sander to level the strips, and then a finishing sander to bring out the color in the rosewood.

I also made a companionway hatch in a similar way. They are both coated with clear polysiloxane rather than traditional varnish. I'll post photos of the finished result soon.

The wood scraps in the above photo are teak and white oak that I placed in the photo for color comparison.

Here are photos of the finished hatches ready for installation.
Vberth hatch.
Sliding companionway hatch.

Wow, they look great. I need a sliding hatch for my project. Food for thought.

The wood work looks cool. I could stand a larger picture though. A good picture really makes a project fun. I know that a year or so ago we all tried to post smaller pictures, but I think that makes it hard to enjoy the threads.

After all, the files are hosted at professional hosting sites, and not on the anyone's home server (how did I get onto this topic?)

tampabay

Yeah I think larger photo sizes would benefit the forum. If server space and bandwidth is an issue, maybe just raise it to 500kb. Even that would allow for a lot more detail visibility. Although this forum doesn't get much traffic, so it seems doubtful that hosting limits are in danger of being exceeded recently.

Glad I am not alone on this issue. My pictures are hosted at Photobucket.

Not gobbling up space on someone's small personal machine.