John Morgan.

The 4 photos  are of John's device he  converted to use on old 'Everjoy', his Eventide 24.  The idea is to follow a pilot hole bored in the newly laminated deadwood, without wandering off!  The cutter is a hardened steel blade protruding just a tiny amount from the silver section of the tube cutter.

'We changed the inboard rudder to transom, and have extended the cockpit aft, we have extended the deadwood aft to the new rudder heel fitting.

It was necessary then to run a new stern tube hole through the deadwood, and we lined up the inboard end with the existing hole through the hog/keel where the old engine was fitted, an ancient Stuart Turner 4!.  To achieve what we wanted a 15 degree angle was needed.

Frost and Drake in Tollesbury, Essex, drilled the pilot hole, because I did not have the length of drill needed.  ( I did not think I had the skill either!). This was done and then it was necessary to use a special cutting tool to enlarge the hole to 1.5 inches.  Because of our friends workload I managed to borrow his borer.  The  were only two problems, the first was the length of the stern tube, 42 inches and the borer would only cut up to 33?   The second was that this meant the hole now had to be bored from both ends.....   The initial plan was to drill inboard to outboard not the other way round because of the lack of clearance at ground level astern of the boat....

The borer was equipped with a handle fixed to the tube with a collar and  an Allan key, this limited clearance even more at each end....  We managed to locate another collar for the boring tube and had welded to it a large nut, to fit a large adjustable spanner.

Then we secured the tube by coach screws to the timber, at the inboard end, again coach screwed to the hog.  Outboard the timber was secured by long clamps, rather Heath Robinson, but it worked.  Over  three or four days  we switched the cutting end from outboard to inboard and vice versa, cutting a sixteenth of an inch each time,  ( A very slow job!)  Needless to say it was a joint venture with Ann, alternating between tuning the handle/spanner and applying soothing words backed up by tea!'

Ann and John Morgan, February 2006.