The skeg. Small fixes & Clifton bullnose plane
With both garboards now glued in place I tuned the skeg tenons to have it ready for assembly.
The skeg drops in place with a nice, tight fit.
Dry fitting only as I have not yet trimmed garboard meeting edges to a flat plane which shall accept the false keel - and the skeg.
Since I made the transom a bit thicker - by lining it with mahogany - I would need to adjust the skeg, to match the thickness.
I glue mahogany strip of the same thickness. The benefit is that plywood edge will be hidden and well protected by the hardwood.
I also take opportunity to fix a problem I made for myself.
There are these midships flotation chambers. While assembling them I noticed that there are no limb holes for water to escape. They are supposed to be hermetic. I thought that this is a design fault and added triangular openings. My idea was that I will fill this tanks with a foam - just like it is supposed to be done for all other flotation tanks on this boat.
However - after reading F. Vivier’s blog, where he describes this change, I found that indeed I should keep these tanks hermetic and just add inspection hatches so I can wipe tanks from time to time and see if nothing grows there. With foam encapsulated forever there - like in my plan - I would never be able to open and inspect these tanks.
So there we have it: if you think that you are smarter than a naval architect who spend his entire career designing ships and took his experience to design small boats then you gotta think again or you run into problems.
Like I did.
To repair it I made carboard templates for each opening, to finally cut them from plywood.
Glued with thickened epoxy, to be trimmed after it cures.
Having a bit of thickened epoxy left I filled mounting mortises so that they don’t gather water.
I left the boatshed for epoxy to cure and turned to my workshop to prepare newly acquired bullnose plane.
This is Clifton plane and, unlike Lee Nielsen or Veritas, the iron is not ready to use. It is nicely beveled to 25 degrees but not sharp enough to do any job.
Japanese stones got some usage. One hour later I have a glossy bevel with sharp edge.
This bullnose plane was bought specifically for this boat build - to cut gains on planks.
It shall see some action tomorrow when I will start fitting next planks.