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Bigjim · 24-05-2023, 14:30

Some chores you leave to the last. I bought my boat about 4.5 years ago and have been refitting and restoring her for all that time. Started with the big tasks first, like finding and plugging all the leaks. Ripping out an replacing broken equipment and gear. Replacing running rigging and sails. Last fall I saw that the teak cap rail and trim on the transom was on its last legs and decided to rip them off.

At first, I planned to replace them with African Mahogany which I have been using extensively inside the cabin. It's a water-loving wood and relatively inexpensive. But after a few errors with my jigsaw I was needing to buy more wood when I decided to go ahead and replace the teak with teak. The lumberyard I use has dozens of types of wood and the teak was literally in the bin opposite the Mahogany. Although it was twice the price, I decided to buy it anyway.

I used my mahogany pieces as templates for the teak, since they were nearly perfect in size and shape. My transom looks pretty flat but actually curves generously in three dimensions. So, unless you have a steamboat you are not going to bend straight pieces to fit. I grabbed my hot glue gun and a stack of notecards. I cut 2" strips and started gluing them together and taping them to follow the arc. When I got the first strip done I glued two more layers on it to provide addition strength and stiffness.

Now that I had the template I needed I carefully removed the tape and drove off to the lumberyard. I picked out two pieces of teak that gave me enough wood for the cap rail and the trim and carefully marked out the shapes on the wood. I am not a finish carpenter and have wasted hundreds of feet of trim and other wood trying to build various projects. I was really worried about ruining and wasting $150 worth of teak trying to cut these gentle curves.

I don't know how I did it, but after about 20 minutes I had four pieces of teak cut to the needed shapes. The hardest part was cutting the top of the trim at a 5º angle so it would butt up flat against the bottom of the cap rail. Cutting a 4 foot long curve while holding a 5º angle still gives me the shakes.

I went up to the boat and installed the cap rail with three countersunk screws. Then, while perched precariously on an 8 foot ladder I fit the trim to the transom flush to the cap rail and was amazed that it fit nearly perfectly! After a bit of sanding I had both trim pieces attached and all it needs is trimming the cap rail to meet the trim and a bit of caulk. Best of all, the new teak trim really helps frame the new name board that I just installed.