Skin on Frame Shearwater build, day 7, 6hrs
Cutting the outer keel curve and gluing up the scarfs
Today I finally finished the inner and outer keel assembly, which honestly took about three times as long as it really needed to but checking everything 10 times takes a bit of time. I’m sure this is a fairly standard boat building procedure, but this is the first time that I’ve done it this way and there’s not a lot of wiggle room when you’re trying to maintain exactly a 32nd of an inch gap all the way around the curve to accommodate for the thickness of the nylon and polyurethane.
Next steps are to taper the outer keel, then pilot for the fasteners that will ultimately connect the inner and outer keel, then wrap the brass half round around the entire assembly and pre-pilot it as well, then remove the brass and soak the outer keel in epoxy and finally varnish. it’s much easier to do all of these tasks with the keel assembly laying flat on the table then it is to try to do it on the actual boat later.
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