Sunday, November 27, 2016

Finally Putting the Sailrite to Work

One of the bigger tasks (ok, two) that we needed to get done was upholstery on the boat. We bought a memory foam mattress with the intention of modifying it to fit the "owners" berth and that requires a new mattress cover. The salon cushions are the original blue-green vinyl and, as vinyl tends to do with age, is cracking and needs to be replaced.  So, one of my bigger tasks recently was to resolve these two issues.

The mattress required an angle be cut in the foam so it would fit and then a new mattress cover be created to fit the modified foam.  Cutting foam is a relatively straight-forward process.  Sailrite and other outlets sell a special cutter for foam that is a bit pricey, but a simple electric kitchen knife does exactly the same thing. Going to the local thrift store, we found an electric knife for $4...saving over $100 for that tool. Carefully measuring the angle and marking lines on both sides (adding just a bit of size for a better fit once in the cover), it was an easy matter for the two of us to cut the foam by guiding the knife along the line. The result is a nice fitting memory foam block for the cushion.

Cutting the new mattress to size

For the cover we found a nice charcoal gray Sunbrella material.  It is recommended that, to prevent raveling, Sunbrella be cut with a hot knife.  Just like cutting synthetic rope, a hot knife fuses the edges of the cut fabric to prevent it from coming apart. Naturally, Sailrite sells a hot knife for this purpose and, naturally, it is a $100+ tool. Not wanting to spend that much money and since Sailrite even mentioned this alternative in their videos, I bought a wood burning tool at the local big-box hardware store at a savings of over $80. The wood burning tool is essentially a soldering iron with a flat blade tip. Using this tool and a metal ruler (for straight lines) or freehand (for curves) the knife does a great job of cutting the material. It is a bit slower than using scissors, but not having to worry about the fabric coming apart at the edges is worth the effort. I used a large metal ruler as a backing to cut against and it worked well.  Sewing up the edges and adding the zipper were very straight forward when using the tricks outlined in several of the Sailrite how-to videos.  We are very happy with the result and now the boat has a nice, new, comfortable master berth mattress.

New owners berth mattress in place

I'm working on the salon cushions now. It started by copying some patterns that a fellow Leopard 38 owner had.  Unfortunately, these patterns didn't quite fit our boat (I would have thought that the boats would be the same but these patterns would have left a couple inch gap in a couple places) so I had to modify the patterns to improve the fit. I again used techniques outlined in the Sailrite videos, except I used normal brown paper instead of the fancy fiber-reinforced plastic sold by Sailrite. With the seat cushion patterns complete, we cut new foam for the seats and did a test fit and they look good.  We found another Sunbrella upholstery material that looks good and I'm now in the process of cutting the pieces to make the seat cushions.

6 comments:

  1. Good day Mike:

    I have been following your blog a bit and really appreciate all of the in depth project descriptions. Per your instruction, I have been refitting my new-to-me 99' L38 Lucille with LEDs. All is going as planned except that I have now decided to light my cockpit with waterproof LEDs and am having trouble figuring out a good path to get the wiring there from the panel in the salon. This brings me to my question--have you any idea how to take the headliners down without ruining them? Thanks in advance for any comments and sorry to see that you're swallowing the anchor just as a questionable new captain takes the country's helm!

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    1. Hi John. On my boat, the headliner comes down fairly easily. The sections of headliner on the outboard sides (both in the salon and berths) are held on with velcro on the outermost edges. In the salon, remove the ceiling mounted fan, then carefully pry the outer edge (closest to the side windows) away from the velcro. That section is then slotted into the next and it should come down when you pull it away from the groove in the next panel. This will reveal screws on the next panel. Remove the screws and pull out of the slot from the following panel. Repeat this until you have enough panels down to access what you need. You will need to remove the plastic ring around the ports if you need to remove panels around them. Does that make sense? If not, shoot me an email and I'll send you a picture.
      I'm a bit concerned about the timing of the sale given recent political events as well.

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    2. That made perfect sense--I am embarrassed to say how long I fumbled with it until this evening after work when I finished the job in ten minutes...anyhow, thank you for keeping up your blog as it has already given me some useful direction! Cheers!

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    3. Glad that made sense and that you find my ramblings useful. :-)

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  2. Impressive job! You did great work. Good tip about getting a used electric knife instead of shelling out for a pricey one from Sailrite.

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    1. Thanks Ellen! Thought it looked OK. The kitchen knife doesn't have the plate the expensive one does to keep it at 90 degrees to a tabletop...but lines on both sides makes cutting easy enough. The hot knife (or wood burning tool, soldering iron, etc.), when working with Sunbrella, is nice too.

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