The Portuguese bridge door provides easy access to the fore deck while securing the bridge from any rough weather and helping keep our feet dry. Because this door could see some green water, I thought it important to have a jamb the door will be in full contact with once its
closed. Making the jamb out of wood seemed to be the easiest way to go for me. I wanted the door to be able to handle any 
green water it might see without getting twisted, torn off, or damaged. I tend to make things up as I go along, and with no real plan, Im happy with how the door turned out. I turned the door handle out of some 3/4" stainless round stock, and used a round over bit in the lathe to finish the ends. I also turned a stud with threads on the end to hold the handle in place, and make a pivot to engage the handle. Basically, the handle will dog down against the jamb, pulling the door tight and holding things fast. A nylock nut and washer holds the handle to the stud. To make the keeper, I mortised out the wooden door jamb, then fabricated a stainless steel keeper for the handle to dog against. I gave the keeper a slight taper to help lock the handle in place. The more you engage the handle, the tighter it dogs the door down. As things wear and tolerances get looser, I have plenty of areas to adjust ( without much difficulty) to keep the door locking tightly. When were on passage, the door will be dogged shut. When were lounging on the fore deck, or working up there, the door will be opened and resting against the Portuguese bridge. I need to find a rubber bumper to hold the door off of the PB, and also to prevent paint from chipping if the door gets slammed open.The other item I finished was adding a wooden cap to the Portuguese bridge. A lot of you are probably thinking that Im an idiot for adding some bright work, and I hear you, so let me spout off my justification. I like the look of bright work, and I dont mind the maintenance as long as its easy. The height of the wood cap and the fact
that there are no rails or fixtures to work around will make this an easy area to maintain. Scuffing this cap with some 300 grit and apply some varnish, will be fast and easy with NO BENDING OVER on captain Conalls part. Im liking this part, and if I was on face book, Id give her a thumbs up. Because the Portuguese bridge area is going to be a pretty social spot, I wanted the wood cap to make things more comfortable, and give all a comfy place to lean on and rest a beer. The wood cap feels and looks nice, and hopefully will eliminate bangs to any revelers funny bones. 
I had to use the last of my wide boards to form the cap. I used the band saw and a belt sander to form the curves. I then used a 3/8" round over bit in my router to ease the edge of the cap. I ran out of wide boards so I ended up edge gluing some stock together to finish the job.
I used a combination of traditional scarf joints reinforced with biscuits, and floating tenons to reinforce all the joints. Just before where the wheel house meets the salon, the Portuguese bridge terminates with a sever angle down to the deck. This leaves about thirty inches between the Portuguese bridge and the wall of the salon. I treated this area of the cap by laying the cap over the top of the cap headed down to the deck. I could have used a miter joint in this area, but I was afraid the joint would open up, and I like the way the eased edge of the top cap feels and looks. This is also the area where the spring line will be secured, and also where the shore power cords will pass through. There will be a two bar stainless steel rail bolted to the down cap and welded to the salon in this area, but that cant happen until the salon is in place.I bolted the cap down to the PB using 1/4" x 1 1/4" stainless screws and nylock nuts. I counter sunk and bunged the screw bore so no fasteners can be seen from the top of the cap. I had a few bad spots in the wood ( primarily a few dead branch knots) that I treated the same way I do all bad knots on my wood work. My preferred method of dealing with dead branch knots is to rout the bad wood away, and install a Dutchman patch. I use an inlay tool in my router to make these patches.
The Dutchman patch is a legitimate repair used for centurys, and give the work that "homegrown, folk art character that I like. The cap will get four coats of urethane, then I will caulk the underside joint where the wood meets the metal. Once the caulk is laid down, this job will be off of the list. 
This is a fairly straight forward door, but like all things engineered by the seat of ones pants, I have to build a little forgiveness into my designs. The biggest guess I had to make was how much of a gap to leave between the door stops and the door to accommodate a sealing gasket.
For this purpose, I made the hardwood stops easy to be removed by installing threaded inserts into the door. The threaded inserts are installed by drilling a proper sized hole, then using a special tool to crimp the insert into the hole in the aluminum.
This is almost identical to a rivet, but is extremely robust. I bedded the hardwood stops in silicone and used a 10-24 x 1.5" stainless pan head screw to fasten the stops. The screws are 12" on center. The other alternative to fasten the stops to the jamb would have been to through bolt the stops in place, but if one ever have to remove a stop later down the road, the casings would also have to be removed to access the nuts. Through bolting is also kind of sloppy in my opinion and alignment seems to be a fuzz more difficult when through bolting. 
Because I did not want to see the edge of the plywood I turned to my tried and true method of ironing hardwood veneer. Ive been using this iron on edge banding for years now, and have never had any issue with the adhesive failing. 
Once you iron the edge on, you trim it off with a special tool that cuts both sides flush in one pass. A light sanding with 220 is all thats needed to make the edge perfect. I love the edge banding system. 
/8 forstner bit, then cleaned out the mortise with a chisel. I had to make a jig to hold the door plumb with my drill press, and other than cutting the mortise a 1/4" shallow, all went well. From start to finish, I had about 2 1/2 hours in installing the lock set with 1/2 of an hour consumed with building the jig for the drill press. The lock set has a dead bolt so we can lock the door from inside of our cabin. I think Ill have dead bolts on our cabin doors, and the bathroom doors, but will use lock sets without dead bolts for the other doors.
Ill spray the final coat of finish on the doors. No matter how hard I try, I just cant seem to brush a good finish on my work. I think my problem is Im expecting too much out of two coats of finish. Next summer, when the boat is at the launch site and were putting the final finish coats on everything, Im hoping Ill get some help on getting a decent top coat on all the wood. For right now, everything is getting two coats for protection, and thats the story Im sticking with.
bathroom completed. There is really not a huge amount of work left to finish that room, and I should be able to get it off of my list in a week or so. I have to install the exhaust fan, install the ceiling, fabricate the interior trim ring for the portlight, and install the portlight.
Because of the amount of time to laminate the stock I was very cautious cutting the tenons and left them about .030 over sized, and then used a chisel and sand paper to bring them to the final thickness.
The fit I was looking for was for hand pressure only to drive the parts together. A slight interference fit with not mallet needed.
There is such a thing as too tight. Dry fitting the parts together found no problems. Once the door was glued, clamped and squared, I through pinned the mortises using 3/8" walnut dowels. The Cherry has plenty of character and is for sure nice to look at, but the walnut pegs add a wee bit more interest to the door.
Ill go in to the lock sets a little more in the next post, but I will say that I found the lock sets used on Ebay two years ago. If any one knows anything about Trioving, you probably know its high priced stuff. I had to take one lock set apart to test fit it in the door, and I was impressed by the high quality of the parts, and the fact that its all easy to service and re build-able. Nice equipment. 
I feel pretty confident I can make the door weather tight and able to handle some water getting on to the aft deck. I think Im going to fabricate two dogs for it similar to how I dealt with the bulwark doors.
The first decision I had to make on the wheel house door build was how to build the frame. I found a piece of 2 x 6 x 1/4 " angle at the scrap yard and ripped the six inch side to 4" to match my 4" wheel house frame depth. The angles on the rough opening are a degree off of 90, so a little fitting had to be done before I could tack the frame together. I guess at this point I should say that I TIG welded the wheel house door. The frame was assembled using miters, with all the cuts being made with my miter saw... you gotta love Aluminum. Once the frame was fit in to the opening, I built the actual door frame using some 1" x 2" angle and some 2" flat bar for internal framing.
I had the hinges in the shop, so figuring out the reveal of the door was not too big of a deal.
With hindsight being 20/20, I wish I had used a hinge that did not require a mortise. I ended up having to create a mortise for the hinge in the door, and while not a deal killer for the success of the job, it was sort of a pain.
On As per advice from my paint vendor, I conditioned the aluminum with some material I applied with a spray bottle. The conditioner had to sit on the metal for 15 or 20 minutes, then I hosed the metal clean and let it drip dry. My paint guy said the conditioner is good for 24 for hours, so after baking in the sun for a few hours, I hung the door from some lines and gave it two coats of epoxy primer along with the frame. After priming the door, I faired the ground edge of the door first using West epoxy mixed with fairing compound, then finished with Rage filler sanded to 320 grit. Spot painting two coats of primer on the filler to seal it, then three or four coats of acrylic urethane top coat and the door was ready for assembly. 
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Im calling the salon passage door a wrap and the little work that needs to be done to it will be finished once its hung for good in its opening. I did hang it to work out some of the details and to make sure the lock set had no issues. The door is temporarily hung, and will be removed for the trip to the launch site just like all the other case work Ive done in the super structure. +(800x598).jpg)
Before I was able to call the door a finished job, I wanted to make sure the Trioving lock set was going to work given the thicker stops I installed. Ive seen situations before where full mortised lock sets have the handles hitting the stop as the door opens. Trioving uses a very deep mortise for the lock set @ 4 1/4" so this scenario really wasnt a problem. Trioving has some pretty nice user friendly design in their gear. The screws they use to hold the sets together are machined to adjust.
Once you have the lock set in place, you cut the screws in a machined groove they have to get the proper length. This way one does not have to use a die to repair the cut end. Another nice detail Trioving uses is how they hold he handles on to the square stock that passes through the lock set. The square stock is split in half for a certain distance where the handle lands, and the set screw that holds the handle in place is extra long. The extra long set screw has a long nipple machined on the end of it and as you tighten the set screw in place, it engages the slot in the square stock and spreads it out creating an interference fit between the square stock and the handle. This is a much nicer way in my opinion to retain the handle vs a set screw that just engages the stock.
I used some scrap 3/16 316 stainless I have in the barn to fabricate the keeper. I used the mill to machine the slots that the two lock set bolts will engage. The bolts are 1/2" wide, so I machined the slots to 9/16".
Once the door is hung for good at the launch site, and after the seal is in place, Ill adjust the keeper in the jamb and final grind the slots depending on how tight I want the door to close. I might have to TIG weld a small return piece of stock on the slot that engages the handle bolt, but Ill figure that out once the door is permanently hung. I I also might try to broach square corners in the keeper, but once again, well see how it fits. .jpg)