Practical Projects
Tom Pyke renews the shelf fiddles aboard his Jaguar 25
PBO readers’ tips for galley rails and an impeller extractor
When I bought Beowulf, my 1980s Jaguar 25, below decks I was buying little more than a shell. Previous owners had stripped out every scrap of surplus weight in order to race her. When she was sold on, great care was taken by the next owner to ensure she had everything that she needed, but the boat still felt spartan below.
Anyone who knows the Jaguar 25 or its American parent, the Catalina 25, will know that colonial-style fiddle rails are part of the look, but they are also a crucial bit of the boat’s very limited stowage, allowing the crew to see at a glance what is stored at the ready.
The original galley rails were never replaced – a decorative strip of wood was screwed at the front of the ledge in the GRP moulding in its place, and that was that.
In theory I could have bought lengths of readymade galley rail, but it is far from cheap. In theory I could have bought spindles and made up new rails. In theory I could also have set up a jig and bored lots of holes to receive the spindles.
So why didn’t I? Well I wanted galley rails, but I really wanted them to be more like my granny’s plate rack, unfussy and practical.
So I kept on looking for an easy solution.
Then I was in the bookshop at the Royal Festival Hall and came across Reinventing IKEA: 70 DIY Projects to Transform IKEA Essentials, and it got me thinking about the spare IKEA Ivar shelving in the garage. I am a vicar and moving to and from vicarages means I’m always either inheriting a set of unwanted Ivar shelving or erecting my own.
The attraction of Ivar is that the uprights for the shelves have two rows of 6mm holes drilled at 30mm intervals, originally to take the metal pins
that support the shelves. I took one upright and sawed it down the middle - with the holes underneath it would make an ideal top rail. For the bottom rail I wanted to make it an L-section nosing that would cover the edge of the shelf. With a router I excavated the back of an upright so I had one row of holes untouched, and one row reduced to 5mm deep.
The next thing was to cut and fit dowels between the top and bottom rails. This included fitting plugs in the unwanted holes.
Once the top rail and its dowels were made up into a sort of large comb, there was the challenge of fitting 70 dowels, all at the same time, into holes waiting for them. Often when you align a row of dowels there is always one or more off-centre. What I needed was a tool like a pencil-sharpener – pointed dowels would slide into the waiting holes more easily.
And so it proved: after sharpening 70 dowels they went in like a dream and were glued with polyurethane glue.
Once the rails were rubbed down and stained I fitted them and stuck them in place with marine silicone sealant, which is a powerful adhesive in its own right.
Admiring my handiwork I realised that Ivar could provide shelves with galley railing elsewhere on the boat. The difficulty, of course, will be knowing when to stop!