Trawlercat
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Endeavour
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Adding Storage
Masking Tape Shelf Design
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The portable sewing machine sat on the cabin floor near the washer/dryer on our Endeavour Trawlercat 36 named Odyssey. Sticking out slightly and while not quite in the way it wasn't in the best of locations. As importantly, if it was lifted up the outward flare of the hull allowed it to then sit outboard of the cabin floor and the entrance to the compartment. All that was lacking was a shelf to support it. That started Ruth thinking and working. As we cruised she played with alternatives until one day she had a dimensioned scale drawing of what she wanted. One shelf for the sewing machine had grown to a number of shelves cleverly using the open space along the hull.
Dimensions had been carefully figured, but some of them were tough to
determine because of the hull curve. We were also concerned about whether
the shelves would be overpowering in the small space and how they'd fit in
around the washer dryer. To better visualize how things would look we took
her plans and masking taped them to the hull in the planned shelf area so
we could double-check everything.
That's when the masking tape
inspiration hit. Rapidly we masked off the floor, hull and bulkhead to
show the indicated shelves . The physical space our planned shelves would
take began to take place before our eyes. Tape from the overhead to the
floor boxed in the area giving us a masking tape outline of our planned
shelves. The results were helpful. Our simple tape outline revealed two
concerns. First, as we feared, the space seemed confined with full depth
shelves. Second, the shelves at the bulkhead would be very deep and we
knew things would be hard to access. Both problems were fixed by cutting
the upper shelves back, something we hadn't anticipated on the original
sketches. Marks went on the masking tape indicating the new shelf depth.
Then we realized it could be simple to add 3 small additional shelves to
continue on across the hull to the washer/dryer and provide a more
finished look.
Digital pictures of the masking tape outline provided a means of conveying our ideas more accurately to a carpenter. Earlier we had had a minor misunderstanding when we added shelves to our cabin. This was much more complex and we wanted to make our ideas clear. Looking at the pictures on our laptop we realized we could show more than a masking tape outline and a dimensioned drawing.
Using Photoshop, a layer with straight lines over the masking
tape was added.
Some tinkering allowed us to get a grid established that compensated for
perspective and the curvature of the hull. With that in place the masking
tape was edited out of the picture leaving the grid showing where shelves
were located.
Shelves were 'constructed' using
the grid for scaling. Each shelf was 'built' on it's own layer on the
computer. By stacking them up in the correct sequence a full dimensional
image of the shelves came up giving us a good idea of what our unit would
look like in place. Finally we added the dimensions from the Ruth's prints
so we had a 3 dimensional mock up of our planned shelves complete with
dimensions. Happy with our results, we e-mailed them to Endeavour asking
them to do the work the next time we visited St Petersburg.
We left Odyssey with Endeavour to do some upgrades while we headed north to spend the holidays with family. Jeff Trowbridge, one of Endeavour's outstanding carpenters undertook the shelf project. He had large print outs of our photo mock-ups and was extremely pleased to have such complete drawings.
Jeff completed the shelves just as we returned. The
workmanship is outstanding
and the shelves look and are fantastic. Thanks to some masking tape, and
digital photo technology we got exactly what we wanted. The sewing machine
is out of the way, and now there is space to store and display in progress
quilting projects Ruth's
next favorite activity after driving Odyssey.
Don and Ruth Kalen
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