Confessions time

Ok - so I have to confess to a couple of snafus so far.

The first one was not too bad and I was able to easily fix. I noticed after I installed the Bow transom that even though I could have sworn that it was on there straight, that it was actually slightly crooked! Good news was that after carefully using one of the larger x-acto knives, that I was able to remove it, and re-epoxy it without to much troubles.

In the process of fixing this problem I noticed a second more serious problem: The dagger board casing was lying slightly crooked along the center line of the boat. I believe that the cause of this problem was the fact that I glued the dagger board casing frames onto the back bone before I had the rest of the boat fully tied down to the building frame. I found that this 4 mm plywood is very flexible and warps very easily which most likely contributed to the problem.

I ended up having to thickness plane some of the left over material that I bought for the dagger board and rudder to be the same thickness as that portion of the dagger board casing that protruded from the backbone. I then cut them to size and screwed them on to both sides of the backbone and on both sides of the dagger board casing to true up the backbone in those areas. Finally I connected both boards with a 2 x 2 that I had run through the joiner to get a nice true surface. After I screwed everything together, I got my handy laser level out to check everything out, and everything appears fair and true.

I'll cover the portion of these extra frames that might get glue on them from the hull skinning process in order to facilitate their removal upon the flipping of the hull. Once the bottom and side skins go on I am pretty confident that the dagger board will stay put and I will remove all this extra bracing.