keel hauled

The last week was spent working on the keel. We needed a semi-hard wood, which is difficult to come by in Tauranga despite all the boat building. Eventually I found a little saw mill down a windy gravel road near here. Once you manage to find the rickety old building - behind all the stacks of timber - you’re not sure if it’s been abandoned for 30 years until you see some sawdust billow out from behind a machine. This place reeks character.

Eventually they found some old kauri floor beams and machined one up for me. A beautiful piece of timber barring a few nail holes.
Considerable time was spent draughting the keel and then shaping it with the assistance of the router. Then I spent some rather uncomfortable time inside the boat waiting for the command to fasten the screws.

The last two pieces either side of the centre-board slot went on in rather a rush before dinner on Saturday. I went out yesterday and grabbed one of the Makitas, but some wayward epoxy seemed to have fastened it to the hull. Don’t tell Dad…

ramming speed

I’ve added extra layers of fibreglass tape to the bow (because some members of this family forget to give way).

And there's been lots of sanding.

Fiberglassing

With the fibreglass in place, we can start applying the resin. The job is to get the resin evenly applied without runs and to get the glass cloth lying nicely on the boat.

Our trusty epoxy mixing machine.

We trim the cloth as we go, once it's all been wetted.

The first coat is on, but it needs several coats of epoxy resin to fill the weave of the fiberglass cloth. If you wait for the epoxy to dry (roughly a day) you'll have to scrub the amine blush off, and then sand it before you can apply the next coat. However you can apply another coat while the epoxy is in the ‘green’ state – started to cure, but not hardened, slightly tacky – or roughly six hours.

And so six hours later the second coat is carefully applied. We've added a little fairing powder to the resin to make it lighter and help full the weave quicker.

As the evening wears on we realise we need to heat the garage. Dad couldn't resist using his new toy.

Eventually common sense prevailed (before everything went up in flames). The fourth coat went on at midnight and the final at six AM.

Fibreglass Prep

The bottom and the first plank are going to be fiberglassed, with 200gm fibreglass cloth.

And then we discovered a half built boat in the garage...

We’re back at it. After a long period of other things taking up the “spare time slot” (namely making a movie for me) we’re back into building a boat.

To get a nice fair curve on the planks, we attached a temporary batten and used a profile cutter on the trusty router.

We’re in the old, sand and fill, rinse repeat stage. And the ugly duckling has a bad case of chicken pox.