Custom stowage
To house fragile items on board, David Parker makes quick but lightweight and strong wooden boxes using fast curing epoxy
On any boat, particularly smaller craft, the stowage of more delicate objects is always a challenge and for expensive items some sort of protective casing is required.
Metal cases (when available) are, of course, strong but heavy and prone to rust; and while sealed plastic-type boxes are useful, they have their limitations and there are some objects which deserve a better home to keep them safe and secure.
These plywood boxes are ideal and you can custom make them to fit the required shape exactly. In this project I show how to make them for the oil lamps I keep on board – the mantle on my pressure Tilley lamp is easily damaged if it gets knocked and similarly my standard oil lamp with its glass shade is vulnerable when stacked away.
However these boxes can be adapted to any size or shape to be used for navigation instruments, electrical items or engine spares such as injector pipes or the glass bowls for fuel filters, for example.
A tough plywood box can be readily made out of varying thicknesses of plywood and the heavier the item the thicker the box panels need to be. The main thing I like about this construction method is that it’s ideal for thin plywood only 5mm thick, which means boxes are light as well as strong. This plywood is also readily
available as exterior grade material in half and third sheet sizes – sometimes you even see offcuts of it in the remainder bin at timber merchants or DIY stores.
This is a good project for those who are less experienced with woodwork and you can get satisfying results with a modest skill level. The step-by-step design I have outlined here uses no fixings. You can of course use a combination of fixings and/or standard wood adhesive, but to cut and plane edges of thin laminate neatly and then hold it perfectly square while nailing pins can be tricky. The method described here demonstrates the use of fast curing epoxy to get the box shape accurately and is much more straightforward. The box, once assembled, can then be reinforced if required with epoxy fillets or small, square section batten glued in place.