After just over a year of building, the keel will finally get laid. My spars are completely finished and many smaller steps are complete much earlier than in the manual sequence. So I’m hoping all of that will pay off in less crawling around in cramped spaces, etc. My oldest daughter helped me place the […]
The manual illustrates placing a piece of wood on top of the aft section of the keel and then tracing the shape from the underside. I guess you would then make a bunch of 1/4″ marks to the inside of those lines and join those marks up to make your cut lines. All this to […]
Poured lead for the keel this weekend and all went well. I’ll relate a few things that I learned or that I haven’t heard mentioned before. First, I had a couple of buddies come help and that made a big difference. When I poured the centerboard a few months ago there were just two of […]
After the complete glueup, I stood it up on the bench and stared at it for 10 minutes. Then I flipped it over and sanded the very bottom. The outer edges got a 1/2″ roundover per the manual and I gave the inside trunk edges a 1/8″ pass, just enough to take the edge off. […]
As many other builders have done, I took this in several stages and did a lot of dry fitting in between. A previous post discussed a couple of areas I wanted to be particularly cognizant of. I’m happy to say that all went well and the keel is as it should be. Blocking & Trial […]
With the rudder, centerboard, and centerboard trunk built and my spars well on the way to being finished and ready to put away, I finally get to start working on the keel. Also complete are initial coats of epoxy on a lot of large pieces like bulkheads and then multiple smaller pieces like floors. All […]