Keel and Stem

I have been working on the outer parts of the keel and stem. The stem has been gathering dust since I made the blank some months ago. The keel blank is about 5 metres long, 80mm high and 75mm wide; it is straight but about 700mm at the forward end has a slight curve. The blank is 56mm thick Douglas Fir with 2 x 12mm strips of Tasmanian Oak laminated onto the outside edge.

Where the keel and stem join there is a hooked scarph joint. Here is a photo of the two pieces in place. there is still more shaping of both pieces to be done before they are fixed in place.

Over the last week I have removed most of the framework that the hull was built over. When I was building the frame I had in mind that it would have to be removed and tried to build it in a way that would facilitate its removal. In places this worked well. In others I simply had to cut the frame to pieces to get it out. I now have a lot of firewood and an empty hull,

The plastic nails that I used to fix the strips of plywood made many "exit wounds" on the inside of the hull. These were worse due to the tendency of hoop pine ply to split. The end result is not a pretty sight! Here are a couple of photos of the inside of the hull, looking forward first and then aft.

 The foreshortening in these photos gives a false impression of the volume of the boat - it is quite big!

This close up of the inside surface gives a better idea of the scale of the cleanup operation, lots of epoxy to clean off and holes to fill. This will all work out OK as I have always intended to paint the inside of the hull.