Boat work since the last blog

So I'll try to get things up to date since the last boatbuilding post. After Mike and I steamed the keel and clamped it in place, I let it dry for a week or two, largely because I didn't have time to get to it. In mid-October, Vince came over and helped me epoxy it in place, and I added some screws about a week after that. It is at this point that I should mention one of the major headaches of boatbuilding, at least with this project.

Whenever you epoxy something, you have to hold the surfaces together until the epoxy cures. For much of this project, that "holding together" is done with clamps. In order to keep the clamps from being epoxied to the boat themselves, they have to be separated from the wood (or other material). I accomplish this with wax paper, which is great for that purpose - it's cheap, it's available in any size you care for, it's quick, and it keeps out the epoxy. Of course, it's also slippery, and this is where the trouble comes in. It's just about impossible to use a clamp in conjunction with wax paper, on account of the paper's slipperiness and the ease with which it will compromise any fleeting purchase you might obtain. And of course, while you're struggling with the clamps and the wax paper, there's glue all over the place, and if it's hot enough outside, the glue is curing and you're basically in freak-out mode. So the four-letter words flow like water, and you end up just fighting and fighting until you get things to the point where you can walk away and feel reasonably certain that as long as you don't sneeze, everything will hold. It's not quite that bad, but I'm not really exaggerating.

I mentioned in a previous post that there was a small crack along the keel, just past the forward end of the centerboard slot. It turns out there's an accompanying small crack just past the aft end of the slot as well. Here is a picture of the forward crack:



The actual size of that crack is about 1.5", and the aft crack is smaller than that. I treated both cracks with some epoxy, but to make sure nothing bad will happen, I placed a 4" x 4" plate of 1/4" plywood underneath the area of each crack, to act as a support against the crack expanding. I don't think anything would have happened without the plywood backers, but with them now in place, I feel very confident that nothing heinous will come of them.