Sunday 24 January 2021

Making Plugs & Plugging Holes

When the rails were all sanded I decided to plug the temporary screw holes.

The holes are all 4mm, so 6mm plugs would be ideal after drilling the holes out to this diameter.

I used a plug cutter made by Fisk specifically for use in cordless drills. Here it is in the big De Walt drill.


I tried the smaller Bosch cordless drill but it doesn't have sufficient power for this task.

Luckily I had plenty of scrap Sapele so I cut a big batch of plugs in one session.

Then all holes were drilled out to 6mm to a depth of about 3/4" and plugs were glued in.

A dab of epoxy glue and a tap with a hammer did the trick.

Here are the starboard rub and toe tails, fully plugged.


When cured the plugs were trimmed with a saw and pared flush to the rail with a good chisel, as here.


Finally the plugs were lightly sanded to clean them up. This is the port rub rail.


You can see that the Sapele at the front of the outer laminate is paler than the rest of the rail.

That's because it is recently purchased timber, used to replace a broken section. I am not sure if it will darken to the same shade as the rest of the Sapele, which is now over two years old.

Anyway, the plugs show up more in the paler wood, but I don't think it matters.

Here is a finished plug in the toe rail.


You have to look closely to find them all. I'm happy with that!


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