August 25th, 2024 Posted in Narrowboat

Narrowboat log – August 2024

Welldeck Rust Treatment & Painting

The front deck (called a ‘welldeck’) was covered in rubber mats when I bought the boat. This looked great until I pulled one up and found that water trapped underneath had caused the paint to bubble and eventually split. There were large patches of bubbled paint visible which meant there was rust underneath. This was worse where water runs off the roof into the welldeck to drain out of the sides.

Yikes

I tried various things to remove the rust – firstly a ‘mouse’ sander which blew up within five minutes. A sanding pad on an 18v multitool wasn’t very effective, neither was a blade attachment. The winner was a wire brush on a battery drill which ripped through the old paint and rust.

Fertan rust converter doing its thing

I did the deck in two halves so I could get in and out of the boat while the paint was drying! Fertan was brushed all over the rust and left to cure for two days, this stuff is magic and turns rust into black powder. Two coats of Zinc primer went on next, followed by two coats of Teamac SureGrip deck paint which contains grit or something to give a textured, grippy surface. While it’s a million times nicer than before, it still looks a bit patchy so could do with another coat of deck paint if it hasn’t bubbled up by next Spring.

Wire brush was fast, effective and not too noisy

Zinc primer on and ready for textured deck paint

Textured deck paint to stop me slipping and breaking my neck

Workbench

A neighbour keeps bringing us scrap wood from his workplace and I’ve been trying to work on little projects (palletwood planter, bee hotel etc) on the sloping lids of the storage boxes on the shore. It occurred to me I could build a workbench out of all this scrap wood as a place to work and also store wood underneath. I picked up a beast of a DeWalt battery drill recently and this was a good test for it.

It’s rough, but does the job!

A pallet formed a flat base, with treated 4×4″ posts for the legs fixed down with L shaped brackets. Some battens as framing kept it all roughly square and some scaffold boards formed the top. It was a bit wobbly until some diagonal braces were added to the sides. It’s a great spot for working on projects, sawing wood and storing other scrap wood that will become kindling or logs. It’s also quite sociable in a good spot to chat to passing neighbours!

Misc

There have been several boats getting stuck under the bridge nearby, and they would have had to pass various signs saying “DO NOT GO THIS WAY” to inevitably get stuck on the sandbars. Not sure how they got away but hopefully learned their lessons..

It’s spider season again with seemingly hordes of the little blighters coming aboard. I murdered them on sight last year and got bitten by untold mosquitoes, so have left them alone this year. They do keep pooping on everything however so I’m not sure what’s worse. They jostle for position above the lamps and near windows and seem to work together in some way, which has got me curious how they communicate and if they know each other.