Turning over!

With the planking and keel done there is no reason to keep looking at the boat upside down. Firstly I did a heap of screw hole filling (I know I said I was doing it as I went along, but there were a heap I missed). Then there was the sanding. Anyone who has built a boat will tell you that 3/4 of the entire build time is spent sanding, that is if they don't die of black lung before you meet them.

The whole hull was only actually held down to the moulds in a few places. It was simply a matter of unscrewing

these fastenings and lifting the hull free of the moulds. Except it wouldn't come off. I assumed there must be a little dribble of epoxy somewhere that had attached the hull to the moulds so I gave it a really really big yank and it still wouldn't come loose. In fact the hull started to distort quite a bit.

Then I remembered the other screws holding it down. Once they were out it came away very easily. I was amazed how light the whole thing is. Obviously there are thwarts (seats) and a few other internals to make it a bit heavier, but the epoxy gluing each lap means there will be minimal need for further internal structures like ribs. It a bit wobbly though so some stiffening will be appreciated before I take it to sea.

Outer stem and keel

The keel serves a number of purposes. Obviously it has a limited structural value because I've finished the planking and it still hasn't been attached. The keel keeps the boat tracking true, a bit like being on rails. It also acts as a big rubbing strip for when the boat is dragged across surfaces. For that reason it should be made out of a carefully chosen hard wood that will wear well. I made mine out of the door of a cupboard I just demolished. It looked like handy timber at the time so I kept the useful bits. I think its Australian Oak. Its basically just stuck on top of the keelson. Sometimes screws are put through from the top of the keelson but decided to put my faith in the epoxy (plus a dirty big epoxy fillet down each side that you will see later.

The keel doesn't run the length of the boat uninterrupted because the centreboard needs to drop down through the middle of the boat when sailing to further maintain direction when the wind wants to push the boat sideways. So a gap (centreboard slot) needs to be incorporated. I cut the slot in the keelson a while ago. Basically I just cut bits of the Australian Oak to go around the slot and shaped them so it will look smooth.

At the front the keel becomes the outer stem as it turns up. This is a second piece of laminated timber (I used the inner stem as the pattern). The join between the outer stem and keel is stepped to increase surface area glued. Wow its all getting a bit dry. Just look at the pics and it will make sense. Once it was all glued it was planed/sanded until it was all rounded and smooth.

This picture shows that stepped join. The Aus. Oak keel is on the left and the laminated outer stem on the right.

More Planks

So there's been a bit of a break in posts here because I've just been doing more planking. It turns into a bit of a procedure you get better and better at. I cut a template for pretty much every strake except one where I was left with a bit of marine ply the size of a blank template. The instructions say you only need to do templates for the first few planks but a sheet of 4mm Okume marine ply is a bit over $100 and as each post reiterates I'm a tight arse. If I'm going to make a mistake it'll be on el-cheapo MDF.

This is such a small boat I found I could make templates, cut two planks from the good ply and then attach them with epoxy (one either side) in a three hour burst. A bigger boat would be a much bigger procedure. My dad is finishing a 5m Thames rowing skiff and I'm stuffed if I can work out how he managed to do the planking by himself.

Epoxy is so versatile I mixed a bit of extra filling powder with any epoxy left over from each gluing and did the hole filling (where the previous planks were temporarily screwed as I went.

The instructions say each plank doesn't have to quite have to touch each mould. Apparently a deviation of up to 5mm to ensure the planks curve smoothly is fine. I may have just exceeded the 5mm but the planks are nicely curved (fair). As well as the curve from stem to stern there is the up and down curve to consider. This is much harder to predict when planking a boat you've never actually seen and doing it upside down. The second photo (below) shows how the plank widths and angles vary a bit as the reach the stem. Don't tell anyone.

Some texts say you can use almost anything powdery as filler with epoxy so I thought I'd try this using some some of the fine saw dust from the random orbital sander. Turns out you can take the tight arse thing too far. The result is OK but sort of coarse and doesn't smooth well before it sets so you have lots more sanding to do later.

When all the planks were on I bought some more meranti architrave, ripped it down and attached two rubbing strips, at the top and bottom of the sheer strake, a-la working boat.