Read the instructions three times, measure 47 times, cut once or twice
This weekend was about putting it ALL together. All being the keel. I have never in my life been so scared. It started out in a good way, I dropped my centerboard trunk into place, trimmed and adjusted my nose block made a nice little piece of wood to fit between the nose block and centerboard trunk. I was ready to epoxy and this was Saturday morning! First thought that went through my mind is that I am getting REALLY good at this boat building thing, the second was Dunn and Kruger. So I stopped boat building for a few hours, went out spent some time with the first mate looking for important items like LOL Suprise Dolls (didn't find any) then came back.
On my return I found the following:
So in the above picture you can see my clever solution to the tail end of the keel. What I didn't know due to some ambiguity in the instructions was you are suppose to put the top corner on the back edge and trim the excess off. Because I didn't, it shifted everything forward. You can see two lines near the vertical piece of wood (pictured below) on the left showing where the bottom keel panels line up verses where the top keel panels line up when aligned to the centerboard trunk swivel hole. You know where the axle for the centerboard is. Kinda important! But easy fix, I trimmed the same amount off the front and then using sandpaper and slow, slow going got the Centerboard axle holes to line up perfectly.
On my return I found the following:
- The centerboard trunk was reversed, easy fix.
- The cool dove tail at the rear end of the keel pushed everything forward by 1 centimeter. Not so easy, but not hard.
- There are these cool holes in the side of the keel that tells you if you fucked up, lucky I found them before I fucked up.
So for the rest of Saturday I went into review mode and covered all steps again twice from the start to where I was. Then I made a list of fuck ups (listed above), then went to bed.
Sunday morning I got up, go showered and fed then attacked the fuck up list.
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| Looks great, messed up everything forward of it. |
So in the above picture you can see my clever solution to the tail end of the keel. What I didn't know due to some ambiguity in the instructions was you are suppose to put the top corner on the back edge and trim the excess off. Because I didn't, it shifted everything forward. You can see two lines near the vertical piece of wood (pictured below) on the left showing where the bottom keel panels line up verses where the top keel panels line up when aligned to the centerboard trunk swivel hole. You know where the axle for the centerboard is. Kinda important! But easy fix, I trimmed the same amount off the front and then using sandpaper and slow, slow going got the Centerboard axle holes to line up perfectly.
After checking everything again, I went a mixed a large batch of thickened epoxy up and glued everything in. First starting with the centerboard trunk, making for SURE those axle holes are lined up as much as I can. Then the nose loosely, then the spacer and tighten everything down and pile anything that had weight on the centerboard. I also put some 1 inch high pieces of scrap wood into the trunk so the weight of the crap on top doesn't warp it.
Looking good. This part gave me a lot of problems as well. Looks like we came up with the same solution on the stern part. I don't think the bottom piece of wood is long enough in the plans. Before epoxying the other side, stand it up on end and make sure it is straight! Take it slow and have fun!
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