Bottom panel

Pete came around for a nosey and was soon put to work marking and cutting out the bottom panel. Finaly getting some shape. Have also put some tissue glass on the bottom half of the centre board to protect the wood when we take a mould for the jelly tip.

Srarfed 13mm sheet for bottom panel

Tucked into the 13mm panel using power plane and then belt sander. Used an 8:1 scarf. Wetted out joints with raw epoxy for about 5 minutes so some epoxy could soak into end grain and then applied thickened epoxy. I used a bowed bit of Kahikatea plus some epoxy to apply even pressue to the join.

Centreboard Tip

Decided to glue and shape a foam tip the centreboard and then cover in tissue glass. Then I will cover the whole board in tissue glass so I can take a mould for the lead keel

Little jobs

Coated all the frames with epoxy before assembly. Also put 1 layer of glass on the transom. I made a guide to check the airfoil shape on the centreboard. It has come out pretty cool. Just a bit of filling and sanding to be done. Then I will glass and take a mould for the lead.

Centreboard continued

Here is how I decided to do my centreboard after trying to find methods using google and not finding many...
The foil shape only goes to about 180mm from the end of the board. After a bit of thinking I decided to rough chisel this area out for the front of the plane. I then tucked in and planed down to about 2mm of the router guides. Penciling in the router marks made them more visible. With the plane on a finer setting and then using the belt sander with 60 grit I got a great foil shape. You can also see the taper towards the bottom of the foil. It has about the same taper as a Cessna-172 wing. decided this would be simpler than trying to make it elliptical. More to come tomorrow. I was dreading this but it has been reasonably straight forward so far.

Centreboard

Tackling the centreboard now. Have decided to use a NACA 0012 profile for my keel. I printed the foil using a shareware program called MacFoil. I glued the foil shape onto the end of the centreboard and have routered down to the foil as a guide.
More to come tomorrow.