Small interior jobs - the table

Since the motor is still being looked at, I've turned my attention to a few of the smaller cosmetic jobs in the cabin.  The wood trim was half taken down in order to refinish the ceiling.  I think the current plan is to put it all back together, document it, replace any pieces that need it, and then take it apart again when time comes to redo the ceiling.  During this process, we noticed a couple of missing pieces.  These will have to be replaced.  I'm not totally sold on the wood trim yet, but that's a topic for another day.

Also, the table had become a bit of an issue.  The table that's there now is clearly not original.  The shape is a bit off, and there's no hardware on it.  I think it would be a nice project to redo it, and I'll probably build a new tabletop and leg at some point.  For now, I just want to get the existing table working.  So this table doesn't simply fold up, it must be detached completely in order to be used as the bed support.

After a long crazy search, I've ordered some hardware from amazon (I don't have the exact link, but it looks like that one).  Aluminum, not stainless, but for roughly 1/6 of the price, I think we'll try it and see how it goes.  By luck, the aluminum rail mounted to the liner using two existing screw holes where the old hardware was installed.

The first step was to remove the old hardware.  I probably would have used this, but the table didn't have the corresponding hardware on it, and I wasn't able to find it anywhere.

Next, I attached the new rail.  Once I had the two end screws in place, I decided to put two more screws in around the centre.  This meant that I had to drill two holes in the liner.  This was my first time putting a hole in the boat!  After a bit of reading online, I used the method where I drilled a hole a little smaller than the diameter of the screw.  I then used a larger drill bit (slightly larger than the head of the screw) to counter sink the hole.  The point here is to remove the finish on the fiberglass so that it doesn't crack when the screw is tightened.  Then I attached the rail again.  Before inserting each screw, I heated it up with a small torch.  It went into the fiberglass without a problem.

Once that was done, I attached the opposite rail to the table top.  This was a bit tricky because the table top was about 10mm thick, but with careful predrilling, it worked out.  The mechanism for the folding leg, I got from Lee Valley.  Attaching the leg hinge and the leg was trivial.  Again, the trick was to make sure the hinge was attached to the table well without having the screws poke through.  If I rebuild the table, I'll probably use thicker wood for the table top.

If you look carefully, you can also notice that the rail on the table sticks up quite a bit.  I'm a bit worried that this will catch on the cushions, so we've decided to leave the table up, and not lower it into a bed until we can get a new tabletop.  The thicker tabletop should take care of that issue.