Hatch latch

How many Dewalts does it take to...

...make a little latch hasp?

Edith has sixteen little steel hatch latches. Gary Perry did the hard work of making the main body of them. Today I made the receiver plates and finished off the main latches with jam nuts and a good bit of grinding.

Here is a picture of the original Edith's latches:

And Todd Bloch's drawing of what they looked like, along with our replicas:

And here is a potlatch. Or a boxlatch:

Meanwhile, a couple loose knots in the cedar for the hatch lids are getting epoxied overnight before I assemble them.

The original leaky hatch lids, which the Kolbs bitched about at length, have a whole mess of tacks on the bottom rim, as if they were trying to tack on some sort of weatherstripping. I wonder what they were using? I may try and use some of my heavy deck canvas rolled into a tube. I've got plenty of extra, and a big box of copper tacks. Why not? When squashed by the latches, it should at least slow the water down.