The Companionway Sliding Hatch

The companionway is, in a way, the "front door" of AtLast.

It provides protection from the elements, will be lockable to keep out unwanted visitors and will offer a warm welcome to friends and family.   It took CAI several months to build the hatch and then he gave it to me to varnish and paint it. This post illustrates the steps to add the laminate and inlays to the piece I call the sliding hatch.

Double click any image to enlarge it.

The basic construction:  

First, a "Before and After" photo:

Here is the sliding hatch structure, sitting on a bench in CAI's shop.  This is prior to adding laminate and inlays:

A closeup of the final construction is shown below:

Fabrication of the laminate top:

CAI cut the panels or "slats" from boards of black locust using his table saw and
then used a thickness planer (shown here) to cut them to the right thickness.
This is a "gross" cut.

Each slat was then processed through a thickness sander which has
micro thickness adjustments (~.008 inch). 
This tool produces a much better surface finish too.

The slats were placed on the hatch to verify fit.
Actually, you can see the slats are constructed with two kinds of wood.
The lighter wood is the black locust and the dark wood is Brazilian Cherry (aka Jatoba).
That's ANOTHER story.

CAI used epoxy to bond the slats to the hatch.
This "MAS Epoxy" is used all over the boat.
It's expensive, more than $100 per gallon.  We try not to waste any of it.

First he coated the hatch with the epoxy.

Next, he coated each slat prior to placing it on the hatch.

He carefully placed each slat.

Then he clamped the slats in place.
You know now that if it gets glued, ahem, epoxied, it gets clamped.

Additional pieces of wood (20"x1.5"x1/4") were used to spread the clamping forces.

Final inspection of the clamps.  This was left to sit for 24 hours.

Creating the Inlays

The seagull patterns below are being used around the boat, so why not on the hatch????

These were the patterns used for the inlays.

Small wooden seagulls were cut from black locust.

CAI cut the shapes of the seagulls into the hatch using a small router.

5 seagulls were placed in the hatch.

The seagull inlays were epoxied into place.
Lead weights provided "clamping" force while the epoxy cured.

The blue seagulls aren't really blue.  That's just a leftover tape, a visual aid when working the inlays.

The final product:

This is the sliding hatch today, with about 4 layers of varnish.  I found out how hard it is to take pictures of something so shiny!

Companionway hatch for AtLast

 A nice front door if I say so myself!