Milestone Achieved!

Today marks a major milestone in the construction process: I have officially finished the hull/deck assembly. All that is left to do on the hull is to sand it, fill it, epoxy it, prime it and paint it! Cool!!! (Of course there is the task of adding all of the deck hardware.... but that doesn't count!).

Basically over the past few days I have finished the spinnaker guide beam and installed it. First step was to cut the grooves in the side of the hull that it would fit into. The instructions suggested I use a saw to cut kerfs that I would later clean up with a chisel. I decided that a router would be quicker and easier so I measured the depth needed for the slot and clamped a piece of scrap wood to the router so it would not go any deeper than that. It worked very well!

Router Jig for cutting slots - Looks ungainly but it worked!

I then took the time to sharpen up one of my chisels and used it to clean up the work I had done with the router.

I finished off by cutting the beam to size  and also making the knee joint for the port side! (Which took 3 different attempts - don't ask me why!)

Today I attached the router back onto the router table and rounded the beam off, being careful to stop prior to hitting the knee joint and also before it hit the portion that would fit inside the slot in the side of the hull. I finished off by epoxying everything into place.

I also took the time and effort to give the cross deck structure a good sanding in order to get rid of all the excess epoxy that squeezed out during the deck doubler installation process and to round off all of the edges.

Tomorrow I will release the clamps, give it a light sanding and put the hull back onto the roof of my garage - time to go make some spars!