Crib Boards Made of Teak
This is an advanced woodworking project. It requires many power woodworking tools and a fair amount of skill. Ready made Teak Crib Boards for a Catalina 22 will cost about $350. I made my for about $76 worth of lumber. But, still, it takes a fair amount of time and skill so you do it because it's in your blood, not to save a few dollars.
Pictured at left are the new crib boards. They are a far cry better than the original laminate boards. You can easily see the difference between the new boards and the original trim. This is how they look after 6 months in winter storage. Soon I'll be applying a fresh coat of teak oil. I'll also be eplacing the side trim boards, the weather board (at the top) and the sliding hatch rails (visable just to the sides of the weather board).The most common wood to use on sailboats is teak. Teak is very oily and naturally resistant to weather and insects. I buy my teak from http://www.woodshop102.com/50.html. They have great prices and are very helpful with working out your final cutting dementions. I suggest you tell them what you are making and the dimentions you need. They will then suggest rough lumber sizes that would most efficiently supply your needs. They will re-saw, plane and trim to whatever degree you desire. Re-sawing is the taking of a thicker piece of lumber and sawing it into a thinner piece. The advantage of re-sawing is that the remaining piece of lumber is usable. When you plane down to a dimention the only usible piece of lumber is the planed piece the rest is turned into thin shavings.
Teak can either be varnished or oiled. Oiling is beautiful but you will need to oil several times a season. The first photo show how the boards looked after a winter in storage. The second photo show how they look after just being oiled.
To build my new crib boards I brought home my crib boards one at a time. Once I got the top section to fit I then planned to cut down that section to act as a temporary replacement for the second section and repeat the process for the third section. As it turned out it was easier to to just continue the angles downward making careful measurement from the originals. There was one caveat...although the new crib boards fit nicely when I accounted for the overlap of the rabbit joints I didn't think about the slight offset that would occure, side to side, in the side rails. It's very slight and so far no one but me has noticed it.
Since there are several different types of Crib Boards I'll show you the general layout only. The total cost of the project was $76.
The original Crib Boards were made of plywood with a wood grained laminate on both sides. I discovered this when I tryed sanding them down to refinish them. It was ugly.
The new Crib Boards are made from 1/2 in. teak. I had the WoodShop102 re-saw and rough cut the teak. I then cut the angles and biscuit jointed the sections together. The last cuts were the bevel at the top and the rabbit at the bottom. I used TiteBond III to glue the joints together.
Finally I finished the Crib Boards with several coats of Teak Oil.
You can buy completed and finished Crib Boards from Catalina Direct.
I made all the cuts on a compound miter slide saw. I ran all surfaces to be glued through a jointer planer. The biscuit holes were cut with a biscuit jointer and the final bevel cut and rabbit was made on a table saw. Biscuit joining is easier than it looks and with a little practice on some scrap wood you can become an expert in no time. Unless you are going to make a career out of wood working I would suggest buying tools like a biscuit jointer from Harber Freight. The price is right and this is not an everyday use tool.
You can cut the rabbit without a rabbiting blade but you will have to make many passes. If you all ready do woodworking and don't have a rabbit blade I suggest you buy one. Plan on spending about $100 for a good one. This is an item used often so buy once and buy well.
You don't have to use a jointer to put the boards together but if you have one it will really makes the joints tight and professional looking.
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