Pleased to be able to repair damage to the bow of Alhambra. Damage caused during the Mankhut major typhoon.
Next task – shaping time.
Bow Teak repairs
Tag Archives: Project Work
Tech Know Wise @ THS – rocked Grease Jr
The Harbour School musical Grease Jr was the first musical production run by a newly created Tech Know Wise [TKW] student tech crew.
I am very proud that the Tech Know Wise crew dedicated themselves to designing, setting up, tuning, operating and derigging all Sound, Light & Projection systems.
Weekly after-school training sessions fueled the team’s knowledge, skill and experience growth.
The team worked tirelessly after school and on weekends for three weeks to be ready to control the entertainment technology systems as required.
And they did so very well.
In recognition of their accomplishment, The Harbour School leadership have complimented the TKW crew for their creative and quality work.
With their first production behind them, the TKW crew are ready for more.
Bow Bedroom Bettering
I suppose the first thing to address is: is Bettering a pretend word?
I don’t know, I get it, and I bet you do. So we are all good.
This tale is about the bettering of Alhambra’s Bow Bedroom.
Not unusual on a boat are nasty termite annoyances. Sadly the Bow Bedroom became a mild casualty of termite lunacy.
A project to end the termite and repair the resulting damage began.
Naturally, this starts with termite extermination.
Thanks to Pest Guy and a nine-month plan, we have been able to stop the colony’s wood-eating frenzy.
Termite dining damaged wooden support structures underneath the Bow Port room floorboards. The feasting had also eaten away at the storage cabinet’s lower surface.
Though not massive damage, it was enough to become quite the challenge.
To help clarify my path forward I crafted a few repair sketches – thanks Noteability.
In addition to repairing the floor and wall the hull storage underneath the Bow bedroom required a tidy up.
We rearranged the stored content into 15 plastic storage boxes. Each with dehumidifying bags stashed inside.
Much better.
No longer weak 🙂
With the hole in the port side wall filled with fibreglass, sanded and repainted and the replacement underfloor support timber sealed firmly in place. It became time for new floorboard sections to be crafted and placed.
Painted, sealed and ready for new floorboards to be cut and placed.
Exciting to have the floor restored to a stable condition.
The termites had actually eaten the original boards.
Sun Hing Shing.
SO thankful to Eric from SHS.
I am pleased to show that the boards were cut, placed and varnished with three coats of International varnish / Satin finish.
It’s good to know that the corner section of the room has been returned to a quality level.
With that done it is time to move onto the room lighting, curtains and window sealant.
Return of the Orange Kayak
Pre-Covid trickery, I was paid an orange Bic ‘Scapa’ sit-on Kayak and paddle. An avenue towards health, strength, wellness and cruising around near the sea. The Kayak became a frequent and enjoyable hobby.
I’m not attempting Military Kayak drills (Sorry Brodie) but have thoroughly enjoyed my outings to date.
Sadly a local Sampan sideswiped the Kayak. The side pressure resulted in the Kayak’s Starboard top centre edge exploding open.
Knowing it would be skirting near danger to use the Kayak in such a condition, I removed it from the water and added a Kayak repair project to my to-do list.
Many years ago whilst teaching technology literacy to HKIS Middle Schoolers, I recall coming across a great video resource that rapped amongst graffiti to how the internet had infinite power to educate.
Enough said: search ‘Plastic Kayak repair’
So I needed to get a Plastic Welding Iron, orange Polyethylene strip, wire mesh. It was surprisingly tricky to pick up a Plastic Welding Iron (not a soldering iron) in a hardware shop.
Of course, the internet saved the day.
Tooled up, I set about repairing the Kayak.
To start, I carefully spot welded the split together, gradually melting the two sides together. With the edges together, I melted a steel mesh across the top ridge and sides. And finally, I welded five twelve-inch by quarter-inch orange Polyethylene plastic strips across the area.
NOTE: take care as you melt the plastic’s together. The plastic will melt away quickly, and you’ll end up with an unwanted hole in the Kayak if you’re not careful.
I must add that I have not spent any time attempting to address cosmetic issues attached to this repair.
With ropes replaced and the hull finely sanded, the Kayak has returned to the sea.
I hope the repair is strong enough to deal with the sea.
I will find out.
A little effort…
Some time with a heat gun, sander, elbow grease and things start to get better. Helping a friend tidy up an upper deck teak table. Getting there.
Christie in Love Production Sept 2020
Introduced to me as a simple, budgetless but creative and collaborative project. The words collaborative and creative drew me in and I agreed to provide sound and light direction and support.
The Hong Kong Theatre Company, under the leadership of Vince Warren, (someone I’ve been working creatively with for many a year now) perform Howard Brenton’s ‘Christie in Love’ for three days at the Hive Studios, Kennedy Town, Hong Kong.
Having mentally plotted Saturday’s technical dress rehearsal we placed, cabled, focused, tested and sat ready for the run through. Being personally unavailable for the actual performances, the set up and operational details have been placed into the great helping hands of Daniel and Liam.
I am sure all will be fine.
The sound and light technology available is focused towards photographic set up which was a bit of an Ah ha moment for me. The challenge drove us to do the best with what we have access to. After all, where there is a will, there is a way.
- AUDIO TECH
- 2 x Makie full range speakers.
- 2 x tripods.
- 1 x Makie eight input audio mixer
- LIGHTING TECH
- 6 x Prophoto D1 1000 Air 1500 watt
- Collection of tripods
- Plus our customized chicken wire bar door to spot the beam a little
The performance material is very disruptive, thought provoking and not for the young. The acting is great. Kudos to the three person cast,
A minimal set and little technology highlights the quality and power of the cast and story. I am sure the performances will run smoothly.
I look forward to the next project. Must say I hope there’s more tech to play with. Not essential?, but great fun.
Guitar stand No 3 – best so far
Having a want for guitar stands to be situated in all sorts of locations in and around my boat. I dicided to make another one.
So off to Pinterest for some idea development.
With the ideas collated and sketched on the iPad in the brilliant app, Notability, I crafted a stencil to help mark required wood.
I happened to have a load of 3/8th laminated board available. Wanting a little more stability to the pieces I thought I’d double it’s thickness.
A little measuring, glueing, clamping and 24 hours later i had a stencil to cut out using my trusty old jig saw.
Pleased with the shape of the side panels that would hold the guitar, it was time to craft a centre support, fix the three pieces together, sand, seal with a thinners : varnish (75 : 25) mix and then decorate with the tiles from our fabulous floating neighbour Clare Kirk
I have become a clamp collector through working on wood projects. These handy little and large things are vital to making the processes a tad easier.
Clamped, sanded and completed.
Enjoying the blue tiles.
The only thing added was some more blue tiles, clear pads to protect and stop guitar slipping about, and some felt feet pads.
Done 🙂
Best stand yet.
Portuguese tile art
The six ceramic tile image has been dragged around the globe for over twenty six years.
Purchased from the all-sorts ceramic shop near my mothers villa in Tavira, a beautiful small fishing village on the south coast of Portugal. A changed place now but that’s a different story.
At the time, the image connected with the very relaxed vibe of the south coast of the country.
With Covid 19 locking Hong Kong down again, and a summer holiday blessing us with time. I decided another project needed to be brewed, adding bringing the mentioned tiles back into view into my Trello to do list.
Enough said – it’ll get done.
With extra bits of wood being available to me I thought I’d go for it.
Focusing on getting Mitered corners to match effectively on two levels, detail and careful measuring seemed crucial.
After a few incorrect cut lengths, I measured and cut each piece as required. With this individualized behavior came success.
Key tools & bits a pieces for this project include:
Dremel with a pointy carving tool.
A variety of files – the bastard being very useful.
I’m still looking for the small square bastard file – good for getting those edges sorted…
A variety of clamps and clips
Wood glue
Double sided tape
Sand paper – 60, 150, 400, 600 grit
Earl Grey Tea and lots of it 🙂
Adding teak oil to darken the timbre a little is always a pleasing part of projects.
Overall I am pleased with it.
The best thing being that we get to see the image and put a cup of tea somewhere rather lovely, cool.
NEXT… and yes the cup is nearly always present in my posts.
SML – UPcycled @ stage 3 – Apr 2020
Crafting that quick video was kinda fun. Reminded me of how much I love working with audio media, a medium I have worked with for over 35 years.
Sshhhh, no need to even consider age 🙂
Anyho, onto the tree stump upcycling epoxy resin project. Well it went well, but….
I will be creating a double ended Epoxy Resin decorated tree stump, sitting at 17″. One end being an exploration with swirling colours – cough cough and the other end, blinging bronze & brass stuff.
Having watched a lot of video’s showing off fabulous colour swriling projects. I wamted to try.
Let me just say that as an educator that has worked at the Hong Kong International School for over 20 years as a technology coach/teacher. Failure is a brilliant opportunity for growth.
A growth mindset will see failure as an itearation of success. I am looking at my colour swirling as just that 🙂
I now know better 🙂
My previous post, ‘SML – Upcycled some more’ , shared the preparation of the stump, all the way through to treating and sealing the routed surfaces with resin. With that done it was time to set up the stump, ready to pour in the coloured resin. I must inject at this stage that I carry out this work on a boat.
Yup that’s right. I have been asked before – “So what’s with the spirit level?”
The centre point… enough said… I know.
So it was time to do the 2 part (Epoxy Resin 3 : 1 Hardener) mixing routine. This is the part that needs to be done 200 percent effectively.
Mix, mix, mix and keep on mixing.
I’ve seen videos of people using hand drill mixing bits – I wIll be getting, or creating one. This time I did it by hand. In went the first colour – ORANGE. – remember I’m doing a 2 colour swirl.
From here, I poured the uber mixed Orange Epxoy Resin into the top of tree trunk, leaving a little room for the second colour to be added.
It went very ORANGE.
I left approximately 2 mm of height to be filled with the second colour, brown. I would swirl that around ito some kinda funky pattern.
Below’s a short video that explains what happened.
All in all it’s still kinda cool and only one end of the project.
SML – Upcycled some more
The trunk upcycling has been moving along – slower that I initially had thought, but hey, more than nothing.
An emerging reality has been that with the presence of the Corvid-19 Virus, teaching from home is taking twice as much time as being on site at school.
Not that I am complaining: I truly believe that despite the massive shift in teaching methodology, we will progress from this experience, with students developing an enhanced self discipline and ability to work in a self motivated manner. This is of course a positive thing.
I also believe that we might develop a higher skill level regarding the creation and manipulation of digital media and I’m all for that 🙂
I’ll aim to craft a post around being a Technology Coach at a large International School in this tricky time – later.
Now, back to the SML trunk up-cycled project.
At the last posting, the trunk had been routed down to sit at a desired angle, and the top edges sanded to parallel.
The next step in the process has been to route a recessed area in the top and bottom surface in which to inlay the creative all sorts. The inlay being routed to approximately 1cm deep. Enough to cover whatever’s going to get set in epoxy resin.
The question surfaces : what is going to be set in epoxy resin?
My better half suggested we place a collection of gold and brown beads and jewellery items into one end of the trunk, whilst the other end will be used to experiment colouring the Epoxy Resin. I’ve viewed a lot of videos online that demonstrate the colouring of epoxy resin with dyes, swirling all sorts of very “oh cool” coloured resin effects. I have to try.
Plus, this is in preparation for my resting Resin River project which will be the blues…
From a collection of dye I choose transparent: Blue, Green, Orange and Brown.
Aiming to back light the resins colour, I have chosen to paint the recessed area of one end with two part polyurethane white paint.
The resin is in hand, the white surface is painted and dry. It’s time to pre-coat surfaces with resin.
This pre-coat step is to allow the wood to soak in resin. The makes sure the final pour can fill up to the top with out the wood sneakily soaking up any resin and messing with the level of the top layer.
I also choose to cover the outside of the trunk with resin too. And whilst I was at it, I sealed a few other items too.
I look forward to seeing what happens with the colour swirly whirly games.
Fingers crossed…
More later.
Dean Lea 