Filling and Filleting

Time for all those holes to be filled, sharp edges and corners to be smoothed and shaped in preparation for fibreglassing. Also the decision on weather to flip it over now or mostly finish the bottom first needs to be made. Flipping it over will be no easy task, also with the height limited in my garage once the cabin is on means I will be at least painting below waterline before flipping it over.

I have run a router down the keel chines with a 38mm bit giving a 19mm radius. There is a trade off with the chine radius. On one hand a large radius will be less prone to damage and easier to fibreglass and perhaps help the boat tack, but on the other hand a smaller radius will give the hull better 'bite' in the water when going up wind.

At the Bow I have used a 50mm router bit which has resulted in a near perfect radius at the bottom where the bow is about 50mm across. Again there are trade offs with bow radius. My preference is for a more blunt bow shape. In this case where the hull is very narrow, it is actually quite hard to get a sharp bow, as the sides of the hull converge at a very small angle.

This fillet for the inner wing is huge. Here I am part way through making it, I used about 3 litres of west filleting blend filler and used a compact disc for the radius. I have often thought about how strong this part needs to be so I haven't skimped in this area.

Bottom Covered

The bottom of the first hull is now covered with ply. It has for the most part been quite easy, I got into a bit of a rhythm with the process of marking the wood, mixing epoxy, coating, gluing/screwing. The hardest part was the sheet at the bow on the inner side where there is the most shape.

Another tricky job was making this curved plank. I had to scarf the lengths allowing for the curve by marking the scarf lines with the lengths placed at the desired angle then sanding to the marks which resulted in the angle of scarf changing across the joint. It worked well.

One milestone was the removal of the holder for the bow bulkhead which up until now had been doing a very important job. But has to go to allow for trimming and shaping. You can see it is missing in the top photo.