Keel, Batten, Chine

Hooray! I am now on holidays and have lots of time to work on my boat!

I have glued on the keel and the two inside battens.
The taper on the keel was achieved by routing slots at the appropriate depths. The resulting 'staircase' was then smoothed to a taper with a hand plane.

Keel and batten epoxied in place.

The chines are the next challenge to work on. It turns out that they are not quite as simple as I first imagined. (like a lot of things in life I suppose).
I started off by bending the chine in the approximate position and cutting/filing the notch on frame 2 to suit the curve of the chine. A small block was epoxyed in place to fill a gap. Sharp chisels are really useful for this kind of work I have found.

Notches before and after. (Photos show opposite sides of the boat)

The tricky part of the chine is determining the correct amount of twist between frame 2 and the stem. If there is to little twist, there will not be a sufficient angle on the chine to point towards the sheer. As shown in the picture below, if the chine is rotated anticlockwise, the side planking will no longer fit. If the chine is rotated clockwise, there will be a point at which the bottom planking will not fit. It is a very fine balance especially near the stem. When you have it right in one place, it is wrong in another etc......

Correct alignment of the chine. It looks simple in 2D. Much more complex in curving 3D!

Another point that I had to consider is that the extension of the line of the chine should end at the middle of the stem.
THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS TO CONSIDER!!
I spent so long pondering them and trying to get it right that I am now convinced that it is nearly impossible on the Squirt to twist the chine enough to have it meet the sheer.

I have decided to just do what everyone else does and add a tapered piece of wood to the chine after it is glued in place.

Chines held in place with rope and clamps

  Laminating the chine before making the final adjustments to the chine-stem junction seemed to be a good idea so that is what I did.  It was relatively easy to do. I put a layer of epoxy on each lamination before applying thickened epoxy as the glue.
Put the chines together, clamp them up, clean up the epoxy and its done.
Plastic was used at the frames and stem to stop the chine gluing to them.
 As I am sure every boat builder has exclaimed a multitude of times, 'YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MANY CLAMPS!' I have spent $225 on clamps so far!

Chines being laminated

 There should be time to get started on the sheers in my 2 weeks of holidays. For this reason, I have set up a soaking pipe to soak the sheers in. I am really not sure how well the sheers will bend because they are a lot fatter than the chines and don't look to keen on bending! Hoop Pine apparently doesn't respond to steaming either. If I break a sheer, I think I will just get more wood and go for 3 laminations.

Water pipe for soaking sheers

Framing & Measuring & Mounting

In my free time I have been continuing my Glen-L Squirt boat build.

After finishing the gluing of the frames, I got to work sanding the frames down ready for a coat of epoxy. I only coated one side of the frames because I wanted to retain the penciled centre line for aligning the frames on the building form.

Frames sealed with epoxy

The building form was built in the garage given that my sisters car is no longer parked there. I made the building form extra strong because it is probable that I will have to move the boat mid build. I added extra height to the building form to make the boat easier to work on.

Construction

Finished building form with the frames balancing on it. 

 After the building form was complete, the tedious process of aligning the frames to the correct positions began. I took extra care at this stage because I want my boat to drive straight! My friend Nathan had a good idea of using plastic packers to help get the frames aligned perfectly.

After my frames were all fixed in place, I started thinking about the keel and battens.

Keel and battens sitting on boat. STARTING TO REALLY LOOK LIKE A BOAT!

 One of the problems with the keel which lots of 'Squirt' builders come across is the gap shown in the picture below. One solution is to simply bolt down the keel, forcing it to bend into place. The resulting hump between the 1st and 2nd frame would then be removed in the fairing process. I probably would have taken this approach if I had a 25mm keel as is normally used. Given my keel is 20mm, I don't want to have to remove too much material from it during fairing. Hence, I decided to make a wedge shape to fill the gap and therefore keep the keel straight.

Gap between keel and stem

I made a jig and used a router to cut the appropriate angle in piece of the left over keel.

Wedge block cut with router

With the wedge block installed, the keel sits perfectly flat and I will be able to fair the wood to the curve of the stem. The clearance of the bolt heads which go through the stem will need to be a consideration here.

Wedge block installed

 The next step is to remove the frames from the building form and finish applying a coating of epoxy to the frames. I can then glue the stem-breasthook, stem-frame and transom-knee joints.