Don’t Trust Your Saw

Well, we had finished our summer cruising and we were getting ready for more projects. The first project was to install the flooring on the cabin sole. The floor boards for the sole needed to get glued in and since the floor is under the waterline we wanted to do that while the river water was warm. This would make the glue much happier. Our first step, which you saw in the last post was to sort the floor boards. We then started cutting them to fit. Two weeks ago Bill was setting up the table saw so we could rip the edge boards to width for the removable floor boards. The waste from a test piece was kicked back by the saw blade and it hit Bill’s fingers on his left hand,  cutting up the tips of three fingers. Bill and Nina spent the rest of the morning at the hospital getting Bill stitched up.  Luckily for both of us, Nina did not have to do the stitching.

Wisely we gave the fingers a couple of weeks to heal. The next weekend Nina ran the saw and Bill assisted. The boards were ripped and they got glued to the floor boards. We started on the removable sections that cover the bilge. We figured that was a good beginners project.

We glued the floor boards down with Gorilla Glue’s construction adhesive. It is waterproof and gap filling so we thought we would give it a try. It is also bright white so we had to be careful to clean up the squeeze out. It is easier to control than epoxy. In the end the cost will be similar to using epoxy.

This last weekend we cleaned up the edges with the router so the boards would be flush with the plywood bottoms. We also routed out for the pull rings. The template we made for the countertop got reused since we’re using the same size of pull rings for the floor.