Life's a Gamble, so lets take a Chance Restoration Project

The way the galley top was originally fixed to the vertical panels was by screwing the top down into the panels with long screws into the end grain of the tops of the panels. This may well of been okay if you never were going to remove the galley unit at any time. However, the screws which held the top down to the panels were galvanized steel screws which rusted away over time. This made the top come away from the vertical panels. So in order for this not to happen again. We are going to glue and screw blocks to the underside of the top and screw and glue these blocks to the vertical panels so that the whole  of the unit is one unit and not lots of smaller pieces which can fall apart.   The pieces of trim around the worktop appear to now be original as they are misshaped and not to the same standard you expect on a James A Silver build boat. So new trim pieces are going to be made and fitted when the unit is refitted in the boat as part of the galley area rebuild. In this...

Inspecting the wheelhouse hatch, it is in need of a fair bit of work. The front panel needs repairing or replacing depending on how easily is going to be to make a good repair to the panel.  The top as a bit of rot in this corner. As with other parts of the wheelhouse roof, it will need to be replaced as the rest of the wheelhouse which is going to be redesigned as it needs to by removable to refit the engines when it is time to put them back in place. Also it will be helpful toi put the fuel and water tank in while the roof is off. The hatch has a handle on it, however, there was not a handle on the opposite  side of the wheelhouse roof which appears to be a bit of an oversight. However, the covering over the wheelhouse roof at present appears not to be the original and when the plywood is removed it may give us the answers we need to know about what as changed over the years.  The inside of the hatch is different to the rest of the wheelhouse roof in that there is no si...

The two pieces which make up the corner part of the galley unit now screwed back together. The new pieces glued on to the edges which were rotten are a good match to the original as the new pieces are the similar mahogany to the original. The inside face shows the piece let in is not seen from the outside, however, it is a just what was needed to make it possible to screw the two pieces back together. The worktop is now temporarily screwed to the corner pieces in order to see how much of the rest of the unit is missing and how much will have to be re-made to make the completed unit. The original door for the galley unit which is in need of a bit of TLC to repair the split in the centre panel in the door. This is possible cursed by the fact the door panel as dried out and the wood as split. The pieces which are missing are the top and bottom rails from the door opening and the side where the hinges are fixed too.  

The highlighted parts are of the two Western Isles that were build by James A Silver.  One was called Jetta and the other was Chance. The only different between the two vessels was that ~Jetta was 48 feet 6 inches long and was built in 1939.  The second list shows Chance and was listed as 37feet 6 inches long. However, when we have measured her Chance is 40 feet long. So there is a difference in who measured her then and complied the register.  Both Jetta nd Chance have had changes in Name before being called their original names again during their life times. These are photos from the outside of Chance/Token when she was under going a restoration in the past. These are photos of how Chance was before we started to strip her back to a bare hull so that we could get to her hull planking and the frames and ribs so that we could assess the work we needed to do to rebuild her structure.