keel box construction

Last night we also made the keel box. Tonight we removed the fiberglass keel box from the head of the keel blade. Eventually the keel box will be installed in the hull and glassed in. I do need to put a thin layer of epoxy on the outer surface to fill in any pinholes.

Mast tube

Tonight we worked the candle out of the wrapped fiberglass that we laid up the night before. It took some work and some heat from a heat gun to soften the candle wax enough and even then we had to force it out with a wooden dowel.

Mast tube

I took an old candle and carved it to shape with a plane. You can see in the photo above the candle and next to it is a mast tube for Al's boat. The candle is wrapped in fiberglass and epoxy. When it is hard it will then be fitted in the hull and cut to fit. This step will probably be done when the keel box is fitted to the hull.

The top photo shows the candle wrapped with fiberglass and epoxy and setting up to dry.

Laying up more glass in the Hull

Here is the hull with the fiberglass strips fitted in place dry. We then mixed up some epoxy and covered the fiberglass cloth with it.

Hull and deck

Here are the hull and deck that was laid up from a mold. The hull that I ended up with was found to be a bit light and therefore not so stiff. We decided to add a few layers of glass to the inside of the hull to stiffen it up and to prevent flexing.

keel box construction

This evening I finished sanding my keel blade to final shape. We then wrapped some tape and put some mold release on the top of the blade so the keel blade will release from the fiberglass.

Keel blade work

Last night we did some work on the keel blade (again). We have to get the blade ready to make the mold for the keel box. The blade was filled with some micro-balloons and epoxy the night before to fill some low spots. Last night we sanded and sanded some more to remove the high spots. Some body filler was used to fill a few small low spots then sanded. Finally we sprayed some primer on the blade and found many small pinholes! We put a few coats of primer on and did some sanding as well.

My next step will be to sand the high spots down, and fill the remaining pinholes with some body filler and then sand down the filler and any high spots. Another coat of primer than a final sand to get the blade smooth. Then we can make the keel box.

I forgot my camera, but I hope to take some photos the next week when iI continue my work on the VEKTOR.