Keel and Cabin

 This weekend I've been working on the keel and the cabin on the boat.  It took quite a while to get the keel to be smaller than the NACA 0012 shape that is eventually going to be.  Once i got it down to size, I then used my hand planer to cut a 1/16" groove down both sides.  This grove was cut to accept two layers of 12 oz. unidirectional carbon fiber cloth.  The picture to the left shows the first side being laid-up.  The keel will be faired next, and eventually be wrapped in carbon fiber cloth.

 I started working on the cabin this weekend as well.  Instead of building the cabin out of plywood, the whole thing is going to be built using the strip-plank method using cedar strips with mahogany accents.  I'm planning on leaving the entire cabin natural and coating it with varnish.  Of course, if it doesn't come out as nice as I hope, I can always fair it and paint it.

To the left is a close-up picture of the first few strips that I've glued.  I'm using an air driven stapler to hold the strips together until the epoxy/filler mixture sets-up.  I'm stapling through small pieces of plastic so as to make it easier to remove the staples.


This picture also shows my first mahogany accent strip.