MFV BF494 'Pansy', an old Motor Fifie Conversion

One of things I love about big old fishing boats, trawlers, MFV's call em what you will is the relative lack of finesse in their construction. yachts, pleasure boats and the like tend to be scientifically crafted, every piece a perfect match for its neighbours. The muckle big lump of wood and some nails approach is much more my cup of tea, So here we go, deckbeam replacement for the novice!

first job and possibly the hardest is to find a lovely big bit of wood, and hack at it for a bit so it looks bendy but isn't:

bendy but not!, sweep hacked/gouged/chiselled/planed into an oak beam

next take your chainsaw and do something that feels oh so wrong!, not just a bit not right, but really really wrong... plunge chainsaw one side of the dodgy beam and cut along, repeat the other side of the beam as well

Hmmnn.... looks a long way down, and still feels wrong!

view from below, no deck, no beam, just beamshelf and knees left to attack

next up, rip out old lodge knee, or in our case, allow mass of soggy wood formerly know as a knee to fall out, the starboard side one fell out any way, the port side one is sound (and as yet un photographed), the beamshelf was equally manky so chopped a lump of that out as well, plan is to scarfe a new bit in

nee knees as the say in this neck of the woods - not bit of blue rope, lashed in as a makeshift repair in peterhead - get your priorities right aka - its all going horribly wrong

and the dodgy bit of beam shelf cut away, a good thing and a bad thing, good beacause it will look better afterwards, bad because the frame head fell off as well

ok so we need something to nail/bolt the deck beam to so need to grab a big bit of wood, preferably oak, completely do your head in cutting a funny 27 different angle scarfe to match the originals scarfes that hold the frame together....( ok, I realise that a piece of wood with 4 corners can't have that many angles, I maybe exaggerated (a bit), there were only 15 angles). none of these angles are normal by the way (ie 45 or 90 degrees), get another bit of oak hack to shape with whatever tools come to hand, and put it all together

et voila, some new stuff in with the old

before sticking the bits together, lashed loads and loads of Stockholm Tar on the 'stump' just in case any nasties are left lurking in it. Was half hoping some uber sexy horsey type would wander past, get a whiff of it and think "I say, there's a man that smells like he knows how to give a filly a good time" luckily I can run fast so John McCrirrick couldn't catch me (an explanation of that joke is available on ceefax page 911)

so there you go, next up drop the new deck beam in, luckily the knees/frames are in fine fettle on t'other side, so it'll be pretty much a case of patch the beamshelf bit up I chopped out, drop new beam in and stick some giant comedy sized bolts through, oh yeah and make some new knees as well