Today begins the beginning of a 4-day working blitz on the boat. My goal is to have the bunks, galley and helmsman seat done and then turn my daughter loose on the painting on Tuesday. It was 3 years ago this weekend that I started my Tolman Skiff.

Before installing the seats and cabinets, I needed to install access plates for the two fuel tanks and their fittings. Isn't it something that before you can do one thing you usually have to do a few others? ;-^) Well in this case, I needed to cut some nice round holes and I couldn't use a jig saw because the gas tanks were underneath the sheet of ply. I also wanted to do something to make cutting perfect round holes easy as there were several access plates I had to install. So I turned my router base into a circle cutting jig by drilling one small hole, exactly 4.5in. from the center. When fitted with a cutting bit and a screw through this single hole, the whole router rotates in a circle and creates a perfect hole for the 10in. access plates I'm installing.

Here's a BEFORE photo of the pilot house. I'll post an AFTER photo later this weekend. That is, if all goes as planned. Things always seem to take longer than they should. It's a great way to spend the weekend though. All of this is still great fun even after three years.