Outboard Motor | It's on the Stand!

With the motor stand ready to go I moved it inside so I could install the motor.

Here is the motor, newly mounted.

This has two huge benefits.

One, it is off the table and portable so I can store it somewhere less in the way.

Two, I can now start to understand how it works and how to use it.

To that end I printed the Mercury user manual - all 56 pages of it. Here it is.

This will be my evening reading for the next few days, fiddling with the motor as I progress.

Exciting!

PocketShip Plaque

Some time back my son Nick was experimenting with casting malleable metals to create various artefacts.

One of the things he cast was this fabulous PocketShip wall plaque.

I have had it in my study for a long time but decided just last week to mount it in my workshop, so others will see it.

This is it.

I think it's pewter - I must remember to ask him.

Thanks Nick!

Motor Stand | Assembly

I mentioned in a previous post that the otherwise excellent outboard motor stand had a couple of faulty components, which were quickly and helpfully replaced by the vendor.

Here is the fully assembled stand, which as you can see is very substantial and also serves as a trolley for moving the motor around.

I'm very pleased with that!

Outboard Bracket | Finishing

Having made a new mounting pad for the selected outboard bracket, I set about finishing it so I could fit it to the bracket and figure out how to install the whole thing on the boat's transom.

I mentioned in a previous post that I also made a buffer pad, to fit between the outboard bracket and the transom, to save wear and tear on the transom veneer.

Here are both pads after their final coat of varnish, hardening off.

Next came a trial fit of the spring which holds the adjuster arm in place. This is it.

That looks good. It was time to fit the pad to the bracket with new fastenings, like this.

That looks excellent. This next pic shows how the spring fits between the back of the pack and the adjustment arm, holding the arm in place to set the height of the motor.

And lastly here is the bracket set up and fully functional, with the pad set at half height. Just to be sure that it works!

I'm looking forward to seeing the motor hanging off it.

A Message for Our Visitors!

Hello all.

I have been writing this blog since early 2019. It is my photo diary to document the building of my PocketShip "Journey".

We get a lot of visitors, apparently!

According to the Stats facility on Blogger, this site has received many thousands of visits since I started posting.

And our visitors hail from all four corners of the globe, which is amazing.

I have been curious for a long while about who you all are, and where you come from, and what draws you all to my blog.

If you have the time and inclination, leave a few words about your interest in PocketShip.

It would be good to hear from you!

Motor Stand | Choice, Quality & First Impressions

Having collected the outboard it became obvious that I needed somewhere to store it properly. So I checked out the internet for stands.

As with the outboard mounting bracket I found a plethora of cheap and nasty stands, made of thin tubing and not looking as if they would stay upright or last any length of time.

Others were quite expensive and didn't look to be worth the money.

One, however, stood out.

This is it.

It is made of galvanised steel with a good-sized wooden mounting board and large wheels for easy moving around. I duly ordered one.

This is how it arrived, in a flat pack as expected.

The parts seemed solid but I wasn't happy with the finishing. The axle did not fit the axle lug on one of the side frames, apparently due to excess weld or maybe galvanising. This is the lug.

And the axle itself has been filed or ground at one end, probably to remove excess galvanising dross. This is it.

The vendor has promised to replace them, so we will see what happens.

Outboard Brackets | Chosen Option

As stated in the previous post, I decided to go with the aluminium bracket because I thought it would be more robust and easier to use in practice.

It did, however, require a fair amount of rework to make it fit for purpose.

The first issue was the wooden mounting pad. It wasn't tall enough to accommodate a standard outboard bracket - it was a good 30mm too short.

It was also made of cheap and nasty construction ply, with a quick splash of stain to make it look respectable.

So that had to be replaced.

I removed the pad. Here it is, with its fastenings.

The fastenings turned out to be coach bolts with spiked washers, and obviously not stainless steel. They would be suitable for building a garden shed, but nothing to do with boats.

Additionally, none of the fastenings were metric. They all appeared to be Imperial measures, along with the countersink and bolt holes.

So I set about making a decent mounting pad by laminating four layers of 9mm Meranti marine ply that I had left over from another project.

Here it is being glued up.

That went well so I cut out the pad to size and cleaned it up, like this.

I used the old mounting pad to mark up the location of the fastenings on the new blank.

In this pic I am drilling the countersink for the spring which fits behind the pad and bears against the connecting arm, to help the arm stay in place.

A Forstner bit is ideal for this purpose. Next came a test fit for the spring, like this.

Perfect!

Next I drilled the countersink holes for the bolts, again using a Forstner bit. This is what they looked like.

Finally, I drilled the holes for the M8 bolts, like this.

So far, so good. And I was feeling pretty pleased with my progress... until I tried a test fit onto the bracket.

It didn't fit. The bolt holes did not align. Aghast, I assumed that I had made a silly measuring error.

But when I checked my mistake by aligning the original pad with the bracket, this is what it looked like.

As you can see, the original pad never did fit! The flanges on the bracket must have been twisted out of shape before the coach bolts were hammered through. What a piece of crap!

I think this bracket must have been made - or at least finished - in some weird place that still uses Imperial measures and has no regard for quality manufacture. Any ideas?

So, back to square one for the wooden pad...

Luckily I had plenty of 9mm marine ply still to hand, so I made a new blank. Here it is being glued to make an 18mm pad.

Next I made a template for drilling the bolt holes, to be certain that it didn't go awry a second time.

Here it is, fixed to the bracket.

That can't possibly go wrong again!

Next I marked up the holes on the new pad.

And here are the bolt holes, newly drilled.

I decided to round over the edges and corners, using the router table. Here is the table, set up for action.

And this is the 3/8" round over bit.

I tested 1/8" and 1/4" inch rounded edges, but they were not pronounced enough.

Here is the finished edge.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this yet, but I decided to fit a 'buffer pad' between the outboard bracket and the transom. This is mainly to prevent the metal bracket from gouging lumps out of  the lovely Sapele veneer on the transom itself, so the buffer pad is really sacrificial.

I got hold of some 6mm Sapele board to make it. Here I am marking up the pad using a cardboard template.

Both pads then received four or five coats of clear resin to seal them, sanded with a P80 grit between coats. Here they are.

While the resin was curing I did some fettling on the aluminium cantilever assembly of the bracket. It was quite well made but needed some finishing to make it fit for purpose.

The first task was to replace the through bolt which slots into the cut outs on the adjusting arm. It was suppled with a fully threaded bolt which does not slide smoothly over the bearing surfaces on the cantilever arms. So I replaced it with a partly threaded M10 bolt, with washers and a new Nyloc nut.

Washers were also added to the nuts and bolts which hold the cantilever arms in place.

One of the cut outs in the adjusting arm had not been fully machined and the bolt did not slot into it, so that needed to be filed out to size.

Lasty the bearing surfaces on the cantilever arms were filed and then polished with wet'n'dry to make them smooth and shiny, and everything was greased to make things slip and slide more easily.

This is what it looked like.

A bit greasy in this pic, but it now works well!

When the resin was cured I varnished the two pads. I used a small tin of varnish left over from the first round of painting the boat. Here it is.

I would have preferred to use Epifanes but I have run out, and it is not worth buying a whole litre tin for such a small job.

Here are both pads after four coats of varnish, sanded gently between coats.

They are looking quite nice. I mustn't spend too much effort making them pretty, because the motor pad will quickly become gouged and marked by the engine mount...

When the varnish is finished and cured I will install the motor pad on the bracket and try it out with the motor itself. Exciting!