Good News / Bad News

The universe telling me something?

The number one thing every blog warns against is the crooked keel. This is mostly due to the way the aft part of the keel lies on its taper, and the solution is to prop it up a bit to avoid it lying flat. The good news: I was successful in preventing the crookedness due to lying flat. The bad news: my keel now curves AWAY from the table about half an inch. I propped it too high. Sigh.

The centerboard trunk glue up paradigm.

Aligning the keel so it doesn't lay flat. It worked - too well.

It doesn't appear as serious as some others, though, as I could easily bend it back and lay the keelson on top without any noticeable curve. That makes me think after the lead pour, screwing in the cap, then the keelson, not to mention stitching to the bilge panels, I don't expect this to be much of an issue. Still, it's annoying as I went out of my way to try to get this one right, and oversteered into the ditch.

Meanwhile, as that was curing, I put together the keelson and let that sit under a battery for a few hours to set. It's too long for the shop (or just about anywhere else in the house, really) so I set it up by the front door. This was fun to get downstairs for the dry fit.

Battery + keelson puzzle joint = longer keelson

Resigned to a krooked keel for now, I sanded everything down smooth and applied a 1/2" roundover to the bottom.

Close up of roundover and void in the plywood. Roundover was OK. The void isn't something I did.You can also see a void between the centerboard blocking and the keel blocking (this is the triangle timber between the centerboard trunk and the keel nose). I'll fix this when I do the flip.

Roundover and another blocking joint. This is the extra piece I added because the keel blocking pattern was too small. Turned out OK. Need a little filler here and there to finalize the work. Like the one earlier, I'll take care of this at the flip.

I then sat it up to admire the work so far and felt a rush of pride. It was like watching a thing rise from the nothing, this thing that was at one time a series of two dimensional panels was now a 9 foot behemoth in my small basement shop. It doesn't look like a boat yet but I can get a true sense of the scale. It also sits up very nicely on its edge; very well balanced with just a touch to send it over. That was a bit of a surprise, and a good thing. I brought it to the family room and laid down next to it, as if I were in the cabin. As everyone says, this is a big little boat! If this is my reaction now, I'm bracing the neighborhood for when I actually make real progress.

First view of the keel assembly. Very proud poppa! The frog tape is when I laid down a dry fit on the wrong side of the non-mirror half of the keel.

Perky - the full keel with keelson laying on top. Need to fair the noseblock a little bit, which I expected as I kept it a little pointy on purpose to sand down later.

What would this blog be without a requisite shot of the boom gallows? After 2 layers of epoxy, sanded to 220, I put the first coat of varnish on it, and once again the colors popped.

First varnish layer. You can see the notches from the band saw here. The macro angle makes it look more distorted than it really is. Debating whether to brush over with white paint or leave as is. Otherwise, looks fine when not zoomed in 200x.

It's a funny thing, because the sanding brings the epoxy down to a matte grey finish that looks terrible. And then a little bit of chemical coatings get applied and pow! It's shiny and new again. I'm a fan of varnish, even moreso because this was leftover from another project and I didn't have to buy it.