Getting Rid of the Rot

Badger is currently in the wet dock at the Ashton Packet Boat Company in Droylsden.  The wooden trim around the edge of the cabin sides, which gives shape to the recessed panels, has been showing signs of rot.

This wooden trim is actually lengths of torus profile skirting board.  Unfortunately, everywhere you go to look at torus boards you see a different profile.  After much searching, I found a proper timber merchant who cut his own boards with a profiling machine and had hundreds of different profile cutters in racks on the wall.  He managed to match my profile and I took the precaution of buying enough timber to replace everything on Badger should that prove necessary.

I put Badger on the dock and Steve from the yard set to work removing the rotten wood.  I quickly found out that the extent of the rot was very limited.  The cabin had been very well made in the 1970s and epoxy coating to the main cabin sides meant that the damage was confined to the trim, and limited areas of that to boot.  This now means I have a lot of spare timber but it may be useful on another occasion.  I would rather be in that situation than finding out I needed to rebuild the cabin.

A week's work will see one complete side of the boat as good as new.  A return to the dock in either august or november will see the other side completed.