January 2010

It has been far too long since my last posting . Too many things keeping away from the project.

One of the things has been the weeks of work in the house as well as the weeks of very cold weather, keeping the epoxy work inside the warm house.
This picture shows the case I made to hold the center board. Plywood sides and caps made of pieces of spruce. The box is lined with epoxy and fiberglass.
The centerboard is shown below. The spine is made from a two by four and has sides made of eighth inch plywood. Since that picture was taken, it too has been covered with epoxy and fiberglass cloth.

After much searching around on the net and locally, I decided I would make the folding beams out of pieces of laminated spruce. I found the local lumber store had nearly clear spruce one-by-fours in stock. I bought an armload of those and set them to dry a bit in the living room. Once they were all glued and screwed together, I cut them to length, dressed the stacks then filled the gaps with runny epoxy. A few trips to the freezing shop to use the drill press and the hinges were bolted in place. Bolt holes were drilled oversize to help the bolts line up with the hinges and once the bolts were in place, the holes were filled with epoxy.

Happy New Year! Happy to be boat building again!