Grab Rails

[Art Mullinax]

I looked at the description of "raftup" and it mentioned mindless chatter. This is probably where it fits.
The grabrails on my 71/E29 were pretty thin and needed to be replaced. They were so thin the teak plugs were beginning to wear on the sides when I last re-finished them. I mentioned to my son-inlaw that I needed to replace them and he offered to get me the teak. He deals with a lot of wood/veneer suppliers in the Atlanta area. Well sure enough he called and said he had the teak. I got to Atlanta and it took my breath. He had a piece of beautiful teak, no blemishes, a perfect piece of wood. It was long enough to make them 1 piece and wide enough to make both port and stb rails. It was what they call 5/4 thick. I could plane it down to 1" thick, clamp my old grabrails to it and cut an exact duplicate using a big plunge router. What a deal cause it was free! I ran out of time before I could start working on them so I put them in the corner of his shop and told him I would be back in a week or so. When I got back to his shop he said he had already started working on them. I shuttered!! I went out to the planer and there it was, 2 (two) 55 gallon drums full of teak shavings. He had planed the 5/4 piece of teak down to the same thickness as the old ones... Now I have 4 grabrails that are less than 1/2" thick...He's still a great son-inlaw!!!

 

[Sean Engle]

Oh my... That goes under the heading of 'trying to help'... The last time my nephew tried that, he almost got his fingers broken (between two boats).

//sse

 

[Martin King]

Teak aint cheap

It pained me to read that story. Finding nice teak has become a bit
of a problem as of late. I've pawed through dozens of pallets of the stuff
looking for nice boards. In southern california, we are paying upwards
of 13/bd. ft for 5/4 stock as it is classified now as "exotic". What a change
a few decades makes when back in the 70's it was cheap and available.
I think they've cut down most of the nice old growth as the new stuff
we are seeing are smaller logs with all kinds of defects in it. I treat the
stuff like it's gold-measuring extremely carefully and trying to think
about what I'm doing before any cutting or planing. Decent sized cutoffs are
returned back to the lumber rack and hoarded like a prized possession!

Martin
E31C

 

[Bob in Va]

It wasn't teak, but...

Some years ago my father-in-law had a local mill saw boards from a giant old cherry tree in his yard that had sustained some storm damage. The lumber was beautiful, and he stored it in his barn, planning to have some custom furniture built from it someday. Later that year a fellow who was occasionally hired by him to do some outside work on the place used the wood to build a corral near the barn. When my father-in-law learned of it he went ballistic, chewing the guy out and generally expressing his displeasure in a rather animated fashion. The man explained that he just thought it was "some old no 'count sycamore." Realizing his blood pressure was way up, my father-in-law retreated to the house to lie down and relax. About then he heard the unmistakable screeching sounds of the boards splitting as the fellow pried them off the posts they were nailed to. He jumped up and proceeded verbally to rip off whatever hide remained on the poor old fellow. From what were originally 8 to 14 inch boards, some real nice 2 and 4 inch ones remained. It's a story often re-told at family gatherings. Noble intentions don't always result in noble deeds.