Tabbing Games

We’re moving full steam ahead on the galley, which involves a lot of decision-making.

(Okay, what boat project DOESN’T involve a lot of decision making?)

Deciding on cutouts was a big one. They need to be large enough to be useful, small enough to be able to handle easily. Spaced in a way that’s aesthetically pleasing. Cutouts give you access to all that delicious storage space under the counters; sometimes it means you’ll have to dive down deep to get what you need.

That flat piece of wood? That now has cutouts in it.

In a kitchen on land, you don’t have these cutouts, instead you have cabinets with drawers or shelves which give you access to the space under the counters.

Kitchen cabinets and counters.

Those cutouts (and in fact, the counters as a whole) need support. The lids need something to rest on, after all. That support is called tabbing.

Each edge of the counter needs to be supported, including edges where we’ve cut out lids for that underneath storage access. This can get tricky when there’s no horizontal surface to affix tabbing to.

Aft side support. There will be pieces of tabbing running kind of where Jeremy’s arm is also.

Jeremy rips a piece of fir 2x4 into 1x2 pieces to get the tabbing material he wants. Fir is better than pine (pine is too soft and more susceptible to rot; buying ready-cut pieces of fir 1x2 for tabbing is much more expensive than ripping your own.

The tabbing is cut to size and then glued in place, oriented vertically (with the long side down - it’s stronger that way). And screwed in place. And clamped in place.

The tabbing for the lids, glued and clamped. Whether they’ll also be screwed in place is up for debate.

There’s a lot done - and still a lot to do. He hasn’t even started tackling the tabbing for the Corian cutout lids yet - that will be made of Corian itself, and glued using the proper Corian glue. We just decided tonight that we need a couple more shelves to divide the deep storage into more practical bits - and those shelves? They need tabbing!

That roll of paper towels? It’s on a shelf!