Best Garlic Press. Ever.

We've tried a lot of different kitchen tools for slicing and dicing garlic aboard Eolian.  But this little jewel that Jane found at the Ace Hardware in Friday Harbor takes first prize, running away.

Here's the business end.  You open the top and place your peeled clove on the grid.  Closing the top pushes it thru; all those little green fingers on the lid make sure that every delicious morsel is pushed all the way thru.

And for neat handling, the diced garlic goes into this little drawer, which you can then just pull out.  I'd say it holds 3-4 tablespoons, which ought to be enough for most meals.  Maybe.  But I suppose you could dump it and come back for more.  (Yes, we like garlic aboard Eolian.  You have been warned.)

For cleaning, the grid snaps out...

And the the gray plastic sweeper (what would YOU call it?) sweeps any garlic goodness that may be trapped between the fingers.  It's a clever design.

Finally, if you'd prefer sliced garlic instead of diced, there is a slicing grid stored in the very bottom.

They come in several colors, for about $10-13.  Now we are going to have to get one of these for the house.

Best Garlic Press. Ever.

Exhausted

Remember, a few posts ago when I went Uh oh...?

Well, the time finally came up.  I wedged myself into a small, wedge-shaped compartment right next to the refrigeration compressor (Turn it off!  And more importantly, remember to turn it back on...).

As my body slowly became more compliant with the wedge-shaped space, I had to, slowly, with only a couple of inches freedom of movement, saw out a section of the exhaust hose.

Why just a section?  Well, this stuff is about as flexible as a 3" diameter tree branch.  There is no way that I would be able to bend it enough to get one end off of its pipe while the other end is connected - it's only 18" long.  So I chose to cut out a section from the center, which would give me enough freedom of movement to deal with the two remaining ends.

Ugly, isn't it?

So, over the course of a few hours, I was able to make the two necessary saw cuts thru the heavy, multiple-wire reinforced rubber.  What came out, after I re-inflated my body to its normal shape, was pretty ugly.

Looking at the cut end that passed thru the external salt deposit (I cut it there on purpose), you can see that the thin outer layer of rubber is loose from the bulk of the hose.  And closer examination shows that that bulk rubber at that location is actually completely cooked - hard as a rock and fractured, barely hanging together.

How did this happen?  The exhaust gases are water cooled.  Well, this is the top of the hose, near the water lift muffler.  Nearly the worst possible location if the water flow was weak (by the time it got here, it would probably be just running along the bottom of the hose).  And there have been some occasions over the years where raw water flow thru the engine was reduced.  I think this is the eventual consequence, come back to haunt me a lot later.

This is the tool that I used to cut the hose.  It is a handle especially designed to take Sawz-all blades.  I have a metal cutting blade chucked in it for this job.  It is really the only tool that I could have used to make these cuts, given the space constraints.

For the removal of the two end pieces of hose, I pressed a Dremel tool into service, using a tiny cut-off wheel.  It sliced thru the rubber and the wires with ease.  I had originally been worried about cutting too deep, marring the sealing surface of the pipes, but that was unnecessary.  Those wires are so hard and springy that as each was severed, it opened up the cut more.  It was not necessary to cut the rubber beneath the wires - their tension tore it.

Now all I have to do is bend a piece of new hose enough to get it in the space, and over the pipes at each end.  Sounds easy right?  A story for another time...

Exhausted

Making It Bigger

If you do your own boat work, there is a situation that you have undoubtedly faced:  making a hole bigger.  That sounds trivial until you are faced with a 1.5" hole in your hull that needs to be 2"... say to install an upgraded speedo sensor like I had to do way back in 2005.

Back then, the only way I saw to make the hole larger was to epoxy a wooden plug into the existing hole and then drill a new one, with the hole saw pilot bit cutting into that wooden plug.  That worked fine but was messy and time consuming (yard time = $$).

As in most cases, whenever you stub your toe you need to view this as an opportunity.  Someone has.  Multiple someones in fact.   Enter the hole enlarger:

This tool is really quite simple - the nut that holds the hole saw on the mandrel is replaced with a nut that has its own mandrel, allowing a second (smaller) hole saw to be mounted inside the main one.  Because the fancy nut is made in such a way that the inner hole saw protrudes beyond the primary hole saw, it acts as the pilot.  To enlarge a hole, you install the new larger size saw on the primary mandrel, and a saw matching the size of the existing hole as the inner saw.  Simple, really, now that you see it.

These are available from Bosch, Vermont American, and even Sears.  You should be able to find one for less than $20...  I paid $4.95 for mine.

Making It Bigger

Clumsiness Redeemed

I have sung the praises of Brion Toss' splicing wand before, so I won't repeat that here.  Of course I have one.  But sadly, I am a clumsy oaf.

Sheath, inner brass rod, and snare at the tip of the rod.

For those of you that don't have one of these (why not?), the tool is comprised of a plastic handle, a brass inner rod embedded firmly in the handle, a "snare" made of very thin line that is inserted into the tip of the rod, and a stainless sheath that fits over the rod and snare.  To use, you would slide the sheath out far enough to hide the snare and then you'd tighten the thumbscrew.  Then you'd thread the needle part into the rope and back out at the designated spot.  Loosen the thumbscrew and retract the sheath, exposing the snare.  Trap the end of the portion that needs to be pulled back thru the rope in the snare, extend the sheath far enough so that the rope end is held tightly in the snare, and then withdraw the needle from the rope.  If you've spliced double braid, you can visualize what I am saying.

Now here's my mistake: I picked the tool up by the "needle" part instead of the handle.  This would have been OK except that I hadn't tightened the thumbscrew.  As a consequence, the stainless sheath - the part I was holding - slid right off of the brass rod, leaving me holding just the sheath.  The rest of the tool fell to the cabin sole, hard.  When I picked it up, I found that the tip of the brass rod had broken off, ruining the tool.

I was dismayed.  Splicing wands are not cheap, and no replacement parts are available.

But then I realized that this was an opportunity for another zero-cost experiment!  Attempting to repair the tool would cost nothing.  Ah, but if it succeeded!

Now having a good workshop is a critical part of this - I don't think you could do this with hand tools, at least the third step anyway.  Here's what I did:

• I ground off the ruined end of the brass rod, back to straight unbent metal.  With the broken off end, this meant that I had lost about 1/2" of length of the rod.  This is not critical - if necessary, I could just make a longer snare.
• Center punched the end of the rod.  I really wanted to get this in the very center of the rod - it's only 1/8" in diameter and I could tolerate only a little eccentricity.
• Mounted the rod in my drill press vice vertically, extending it from beneath the table up into the vice.
• Drill a 1/16" pilot hole 1/2" deep in the end of the rod.  Pause and withdraw the bit frequently to clear chips.
• Over drill with a 5/64" bit.
• Now using a Dremmel tool with a small grinding bit, cut away enough of the sidewall to expose the drilled channel and to make a relief cavity for the knot at the end of the snare.  Of course I didn't get the hole exactly in the center (tho it was awfully close...), so I chose the thinner side to cut away,  leaving more meat on the other side.  In fact, I had a lot more meat than the original tip had. 

Sorry it's blurry - my phone camera won't focus this close

Finished, snare installed

The experiment succeeded! For the cost of about 20 minutes delicate work (I'm not counting the cost of the shop or the tools, because: He who dies with the most tools wins...), I got a new splicing wand, saving myself $65 plus tax and shipping.  And because I've got more meat up there in the tip, the tool is sturdier than a factory one.

Clumsiness Redeemed

The Right Tool For The Job

If you're on a modern boat (and maybe even if you're not...), your running rigging is probably double braid line.  And the chances are excellent that that each length of that double braid has an eye splice at one end.  So here's the Big Question:

Have you ever made an eye splice in double braid?

I have made lots of them, and therefore can offer this advice to you:  This is one of those jobs for which having the right tool makes all the difference.

First easy eye splice

Up until the eye splice above, I had used a small tool set that I got at West Marine.  I chose it primarily because it was inexpensive.  And I made a lot of splices with it.  None were easy.  The directions were confusing (actually, I'm convinced they were flat wrong), and the tool was less than inadequate.  But I got the splices made with the help of lots of beer, the mariner's task lubricant.

If you've ever attempted an eye splice in old line, you will know that it is nearly impossible.  The line is stiff, is loaded with dried algae and salt, and has lost the lubricant the factory applies during it's construction.

And yet, I made the splice above in old line (actually some old 3/8" Stayset that used to run our furler).  And I can say that this was the easiest eye splice I have ever made, bar none.  Old line or new.

Why?

Because I had the right tool for the job.

And what tool, pray tell, is that?

The right tool for splicing braided line

The right tool for splicing double braid is Brion Toss's Splicing Wand.  We picked one up when we made a pilgrimage to Brion Toss's rigging shop in Port Townsend, but you can order them online too.

Splicing with this tool is nothing like using my old ones.  How do I make the comparison?   Let's try this:  splicing double braid without this tool is like cutting a board with a hammer and a screw driver.  You can do it, but it takes a lot longer, is a lot more work, and leaves you with a sub-optimal result.

The working end

This is one of those devices that is so ingenious and yet so simple that you will wonder why it took so long for someone to think it up.  How does it work?  Brion's description says it best:

The Splicing Wand is basically a long tube containing a hidden snare.  You slide the tool into the rope, grab the end you want to tuck, and slide the tool out.  There's a specially-shaped tip on the tube, to keep you from snagging yarns along the way, an ingenious mechanism in the handle, to hold the tube in place while you work.  You can clamp the tool in a vise if you want, leaving both hands free to deal with the rope, there's no taping or un-taping, no fid lengths to decipher, and very little physical effort needed to tuck.

 If you have double braid line on your boat, you need this tool.  I'll say it again:  Using Brion's tool, splicing old line was far easier than splicing new line was with my old tools.  I don't think I can say it any better than that.

Why don't you have one?

The Right Tool For The Job

Oooo... Shiny...

Dull.  Boring.

Three posts ago I talked about refinishing Eolian's wheel.  And one post ago I bemoaned the passing of the "good" Brasso.  These two posts were not unrelated, because Eolian's wheel has a bronze hub.  And that hub periodically gets treated to a polishing with Brasso.

But in the last post I referred in passing to the use of a buffing wheel as the tool of choice when polishing metal, and I realized that some of the readers of this blog might not know what a simple, basic and effective tool it is for polishing metal.

The tools

If you have a grinder, then you could have a buffing wheel.  Get thee to a Harbor Freight or whatever your local cheap tool emporium is, and buy yourself a couple buffing wheels - these are made by stacking multiple canvas disks together until you have a combined thickness of about ½", and then sewing them together.  Here I have removed one grinding wheel from my grinder and replaced it with a buffing wheel.

You'll also need compound - the cloth alone is not enough.  That orangish pink bar on the work bench right below the buffing wheel is a bar of rouge.  Well, more accurately, it is a bar of rouge polishing compound. Rouge is a very fine iron oxide powder; the compound is a suspension of rouge in a wax base.  You hold it against the spinning wheel for a moment to charge the wheel, and then you apply the piece of metal to the wheel.  You'll have no difficulty in telling when more compound is needed, because the wheel will simply stop polishing.

(I should be using two hands, but then how would I take the picture?)

Rouge is not the only polishing compound - in fact it is the last and final step when starting with raw, heavily oxidized and rough metal.  But for lightly oxidized brass or bronze, it is ideal.  Oh, and you should not mix compounds on a wheel - get one wheel for each type of compound you buy.

When applying the metal piece to the wheel, you must think about what is happening.  You must be very careful to not let the rapidly spinning wheel catch on any edge - if it does, it will grab the piece right out of your hands and throw it against the wall, probably damaging the piece, the wall, and possibly your hands in the process.  Also, since the wheel is continuously shedding threads - you absolutely must wear safety goggles.  If you are working on a small piece, it will rapidly get too hot to hold.  Wearing a pair of heavy leather work gloves is a good idea.

Ten Minutes:  Ta DAA!

It is quick and easy to get a factory finish on a piece of metal using a buffing wheel - because this is how the factory polishes metal!

(I've seen attachments for an electric drill to hold a buffing wheel.  These are not effective because the drill does not turn fast enough.  But I have chucked a buffing wheel onto an angle grinder to work on pieces that I cannot take to the grinder - this  works well.)

Oooo... Shiny...

Tie shooter

(I wonder how many folks ended up here because they were looking for some Star Wars © related toy)

• Zip ties,
• Tie-wraps, 
• Wire ties,
• Cable ties,
• Nylon ties,
• Panduits (if you work for the Boeing company)...

Whatever you call them - they're all the same thing.  And I know you have them on board - every boat does.  In fact you probably have a stash of them, ready to hand.  They are so handy that they get used for everything.  They're probably right there next to your duct tape.

That's where this tool comes in - it can pull the ties a lot tighter than you can by hand, and it cuts them off almost flush with the retainer/ratchet gizmo.  The little red knob is an adjustment for the tension that is applied - the tool is strong enough to break the smaller wire tires if the tension is all the way up.

It's not an expensive tool - I'm sure I paid less than $10 for mine, but it was an impulse buy (too many of my tool purchases are...) and I don't remember where I got it any more.  But here are some available today that I found on the Intertubes:

• http://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/H-241/Cable-Tie-Guns-Mounts/Economy-Cable-Tie-Gun, $16.  This looks like mine, but I'm sure I paid less than this
• http://www.amazon.com/Eastwood-Professional-Cable-Wire-Tie/dp/B006ISG5M0/ref=pd_sim_sbs_auto_1, $14.99.  This one looks like a better tool than mine
• http://www.amazon.com/Electra-Force-89605-Automotive-Tension-Settings/dp/B002CWPYBO/ref=pd_sim_sbs_auto_4, $6.95

The bottom line is that these things are incredibly cheap, they allow you to pull and cut a wire tie in a restricted space using only one hand, and they do a better job than you can do by hand.  You need to have one on board.

Tie shooter

Getting the oil filter off

We have reached that portion of the year when boats are being tucked in for long winter naps.  This is an excellent time to change the oil in your engine so that it rests all winter with fresh, non-acidic oil.

This means that it is time to change the oil filter.  And there we are all faced with the same problem:  That filter which was so carefully installed, following the manufacturer's recommendation to only turn it 3/4 of a turn after the gasket contacts (they even paint little marks on the filter to help you determine this)?  That filter which was installed with your bare hands and nothing more?  Well it is now welded to the engine.  What went on with bare hands is by no means coming off that way.

Man is the tool maker.  No matter the difficulty, he has invented a tool to overcome it.   Removing a stuck oil filter is no exception - since the spin-on oil filter replaced the element-in-a-canister, many tools have been invented to deal with the seemingly inevitably recalcitrant filter.

On Eolian, I use a rubber strap wrench to loosen the oil filters on the engine and the generator:

Strap Wrench

This tool is cleverly designed so that the harder you pull on the handle to turn a cooked-on filter, the tighter the strap grips the casing of the filter.  It is a one-size-fits-all tool - all you need to do to adjust it is to pull on the strap.

But not every filter is mounted where there is enough free space to swing the handle of this wrench.  In my shop I have a couple of alternatives which have served me well working on automotive engines over the years. 

Mechanic's metal strap wrench

This is another kind of strap wrench - but on this one the strap is a metal band, and it has no handle.  Instead, you use your 3/8" ratchet wrench with an extension as a handle, which allows it to be used in much tighter quarters.  Needless to say, you can apply much more torque with this tool than with the rubber strap wrench.  This tool does not have the range of adjustment of the rubber strap wrench; nevertheless it has worked on every Ford and GM filter I've used it on.  It wouldn't fit the small oil filter on Eolian's generator tho.

"The Crusher"

Next is a tool that grips the filter from the end.  For really tight spaces this is the ideal tool.  As torque is applied to the nut, a cam action pulls the two grippers tighter and tighter together, eventually crushing the body of the filter.  No way can this slip.

I do not use the 'socket wrench' type of filter grippers - those cup-like things that have an interior contour like the shape of the end of the filter body.  First, all the filters are different, so you need to have a collection of them.  And they don't grip nearly as securely as the tools above.

Finally, when all else fails, more than one desperate mechanic (possibly including your correspondent) has simply driven a screwdriver clear through an oil filter and used it as a lever to turn it.  This method is crude, messy, and effective.

Whatever tool you use, it is a good idea to put on a new filter once a year.  Filters are cheap; engines are expensive. 

Now go get dirty.

Getting the oil filter off

A fairly exclusive club

Here on Eolian, we have joined a fairly exclusive club - owners of Sailrite's walking-foot sewing machines.

Sailrite LSZ-1

Our cockpit canvas, custom-made for us at great expense 9 years ago is starting to come apart.  The thread is failing.  When we had the canvas made, the tradesman (Barrett Enclosures) asked us if we wanted to use the very expensive Tenara thread, or the regular UV-stabilized polyester.  Given that the Tenara cost more than $100/spool and that the Sunbrella itself is UV stabilized polyester, we selected the less expensive thread.

Big Mistake.

Tho the Sunbrella is clearly aging, it has years to go.  But the thread has failed on all of the horizontal surfaces.  I have been stitching it back in with a hand stitcher, but this is extremely tedious, and it is difficult to do a good job.   And we have lost four zippers to UV exposure, so far.

So I have been on the lookout for a sewing machine capable of sewing multiple layers of heavy canvas.  A couple of weeks ago, I responded to a craigslist ad and bought a used Sailrite LSZ-1.  This is a walking foot machine: the presser foot on top of the fabric moves, at the same time and for the same distance as the feed dogs on the bottom of the fabric.  Your standard home-owner machine has a stationary presser foot, which means that with multiple layers of fabric, the top-most layers tend to be dragged back by the stationary presser foot, causing the seam to pucker and curl.  The LSZ-1 also has a powerful double gear reduction drive.  How powerful you ask?

Eight layers of Sunbrella: with ease

This machine is a monster.  Here you see 8 layers of heavy Sunbrella that I sewed across - the machine didn't even break a sweat.  It just went ker-chunk, ker-chunk, ker-chunk, with no hesitation and no manual persuading from me - like it was sewing butter.  This is not your Mama's sewing machine.

So I am now busy re-stitching all of our canvas.  And yes, I did spend the $$$ for a spool of the lifetime warranted fluorocarbon thread.  I wish I had done that 9 years ago.

But then if I had, I wouldn't be learning the trade of cockpit tailor.

A fairly exclusive club

Brushed again

Have any brushed stainless on your boat? On Eolian, our stove is brushed stainless.  This finish is produced in the factory by sanding the metal surface.  

The thing is, stainless is hard, but not so hard that use, and more importantly cleaning attempts, can scratch it, ruining that beautiful, uniform appearance.

On our stove, between the two burners you see here, a typical dishwashing sponge with a scratchy side was used to remove some baked on food.  Sadly, it left a clearly visible remnant of the effort:  an area where the scratches ran up-and-down rather than side-to-side.

Since the finish is originally created by sanding, I thought it might be repaired in the same fashion.  But what grit should I use?  Originally I tried 400, but it was too fine, producing an almost polished finish.  So I backed down to 320:  perfect.  I know the photography doesn't really show it, but the cleaning 'fingerprint' is gone, completely.

NOTE:  When sanding, you must be careful to always move the sand paper in the same direction that the original "brushing" went.

Of course, if the scratches are deeper than the ones that 320 grit makes, then it will take a long time to sand down past them.

I did the actual sanding with a 3M sanding sponge that I now have dedicated to the purpose, but I suppose that any sandpaper would work.

(BTW, I used the sanding sponge to renew a stainless head sink too.  It worked just as well there.  In this case, the brushing was circular, around the inside of the sink, rather than linear.)

Brushed again

Wire strippers

A little while back, Drew posted an article on crimpers.  As usual, any article about tools featuring one I don't have sets me off in a bout of tool envy.  Like as not, it will cause adamant rationalization, and finally result in a trip to a place that sells the tool in question.

Drew's article is no exception.  I have been doing my crimping with a pair of pliers-type crimpers that I bought more than 30 years ago to crimp the 10-gauge 220V power terminals on a submersible well pump that would be installed 100+ feet below the water surface.  Now I'm gonna have to make that trip to the tool store.

But turnabout is fair play.

I noticed in Drew's article that he uses a pair of those stamped sheet metal wire strippers.  Like the pliers-type crimpers, these are OK, but there's a better tool choice:

These things are just wonderful.  They:

• Strip any common-sized wire
• Self-adjust to the wire size and insulation thickness
• Require only one hand for operation (great in tight spaces)
• Produce repeatable strip lengths

To use is simplicity itself.  First, set the little red stop to produce the strip length you require.  Insert the wire:

Squeeze the handles, and voilà!  The wire is stripped to the desired length without nicking the conductor.

No tool is perfect.  Here are a few caveats to go with this one:

• I'd say the upper size limit for this is probably 10 gauge wire, maybe 8 gauge if the insulation is thin
• With very light gauge wire (28 gauge), sometimes one of the conductor strands departs with the stripped insulation
• If you are stripping nylon-coated wire (TFFN/THHN), you will likely have to strip it once for the nylon coating and once for the insulation.

Now get thee to a tool store!

Wire strippers

Headlights on your boat

What?  You don't have headlights on your boat?  No?  Why not?

White, bright

You should.  An LED headlight like this one is dirt cheap (I got it at the hardware store for a few bucks).  It serves to shine a lot of light on whatever you are working on - in the bilge, on the engine, or on deck.  When you turn your head, the light follows, since it is right there, on your head.  It's like you have a telepathic helper magically holding a flashlight, always just where you need it.

Red

And this one ("Energizer", by brand) also has a red LED for illumination while preserving your night vision.  Now really, you never know when this might become it's most important function.

Headlights on your boat

Old mechanic's trick*

Say you have to drive a screw in a location where you only have room to get the screw and screwdriver in there.  Or that you are working at full arm's length, with only one hand.

How would you do it?

Here's an old mechanic's trick:

Start with a piece of tape perhaps an inch long,
held sticky side up

Push the screw thru the tape,
so that the sticky side is against the
underside of the screw head

Insert the screwdriver into it's recess on the screw
head, and fold the two flaps of tape up over the
head onto the blade of the screwdriver

Voila!  Now you can start the screw with just one hand because it is held to the screwdriver.  Just before tightening the screw fully, withdraw the screwdriver - the tape will come with it.  Then finish tightening the screw.


* I meant that to be parsed as an old trick that mechanics know, but I suppose it could also be a trick that old mechanics know...

Old mechanic's trick*

Get the point?

Our old thermostat died.

It was a great little thing - it kept the temperature right where we wanted it, and was 7-day programmable, so that we could set it up to match our lifestyle.  But unfortunately, the touch screen became more and more recalcitrant, eventually ignoring our ever more frantic finger taps altogether.  And then it started doing very weird things, like reporting -50° as the temperature.

So I bought another one - a more modern version of the old one (yes, I'm in a rut).  But the newer one has provision for instlallation of two wifi radio modules behind the thermostat (one for you to use to control the thermostat from your computer, and one for the power company or the authorities to use).  Of course I didn't purchase the radios, but the thermostat still stands off the wall far enough to accommodate them, leaving an ugly, unfinished-looking gap between the thermostat and the bulkhead.

So I made a little bezel for the thermostat out of some old teak decking that I had squirreled away.  Which takes us, finally, to the point of this post.  Our sister site provides me with a never-ending series of inspirations and, sometimes, almost irrational wants.  But this one isn't irrational: painter's points.  The thermostat project provided the impetus for a trip to H*** D****, where I bought a set of 10 of the little yellow plastic pyramids for almost nothing. 

Here they are in simulated use, holding the bezel up so that the sides can be coated without gluing the bezel down to the sheet of newspaper which was actually underneath when I did the varnishing.

I also used them in the finishing of a new floorboard that I made - I painted the bottom side, and then inverted it immediately onto the points so that I could finish the top side. Yes the points made tiny dits in the finish, but they were small enough that they disappeared on successive coats. Very, very handy. And they take up essentially no space.

Yes, you do need a set.

And finally, here is the finished bezel, installed on the thermostat. Improved, but the old thermostat looked better. Oh, well, can't stand in the way of "progress".

Get the point?

Wine safety equipment

Some might say that wine is a vital boating fluid aboard Eolian.

They would be right.

And although box wine is now more frequently what is found in the liquor locker, the traditional wine bottle still makes appearances too.  Among other reasons, because no one would ever suggest that a "message in a box" would have any staying power in the ocean.

But now, this brings us to the crux of things.  Most of you have seen those "rabbit" wine bottle openers - you know, the kind with the two handles that grip the top of the bottle and the third handle that you push down and then lift up to withdraw the cork. 

You want to be wearing steel-toed shoes when you run one of these suckers. 

Like most things, I learned this the hard way.  I was (hurriedly) opening a bottle of wine in the main saloon.  It was summer, and it was hot - I was barefoot.  In my haste, I failed to properly engage the bottle in the clamp handles... and when I pushed down the handle which drives the screw into the cork, it instead pushed the bottle out of the clamps.  It fell straight down, and landed on my big toe nail.

The good news?

• There was no damage to the cabin sole - my toe protected it
• The bottle did not break - no broken glass - my toe protected it
• The wine was not wasted

But the bad news was that I lost the toenail as a result.  Did you know that it takes nearly a year to grow a whole new toenail?  And weirdly, did you know that the fingerprints on your toes (toeprints?) wrap up over the end and into the area where the nail would be when there is no nail?

No, I didn't know these things either.

Now I do.

Question:  Do you think it will be awkward for everyone if in the future I open the wine wearing nothing but shorts, teeshirt, and industrial steel-toed boots?

Wine safety equipment

Heat gun

Speaking of tools... We were speaking of tools weren't we?   Here is one which you should probably have on your boat:

Yep, a heat gun - kind of like a hair dryer on steroids.  This is a serious tool - the air it delivers is so hot that it will set wood on fire - like all serious tools, you should have a care when using it.

And like many tools, when it is needed, it may only be needed for a few seconds, but oh, what a difference those few seconds can make.

Here are some of the things ours has helped with:

• Formica removal (at the nav station) - heat the Formica enough to soften the contact cement holding it to the wood.
• Head hoses - coat the outside of the fitting and the inside of the head hose with silicone and then heat the hose (carefully, slowly) until it is pliable.   The hose then goes on the fittings *so* easily, and the hose clamps are much more effective at compressing the hose against the fitting.
• Heat a piece of 1" head hose enough to get it over a 1 1/4" fitting - this saved our bacon when an engine hose split under way.
• Heat large-bore shrink tubing for battery cables
• Soften varnish for removal.  Every so often the brightwork demands that you start over with bare wood.  There is a slip-on scraper that comes with the tool (it goes right over the air nozzle), but I prefer to use my own scraper.

You know you want one.

Heat gun