Keel done!

This feels like the top of the hill, and from here on it's going to be a sleigh ride. I fitted the missing keel piece, and covered it with two layers of glass tape in epoxy.

Sanding and painting come next for this bit.

Re-installing hardware; rudder

I finally got the holes in the right places for the mizzen mast step and partners, and for the rudder gudgeons. I drilled over-sized holes first, filled them with thickened epoxy, and then drilled the holes for the fastenings into the cured epoxy. This is so no water gets to the wood via the fastenings.
The bottom gudgeon was a little tricky, as the two bolts  closest to the centreline had to be angled outward to miss the transom knee on the inside with enough room to put a washer and a nut on. This was John's idea, to put them in on an angle—I wouldn't have thought to do that, but it worked fine. The upper gudgeon is an eye-bolt. I'd like to find a threaded eye to put on the inside of it, as there's lots of bolt coming through and it may as well be put to another use rather than just being chopped off.

Speaking of which, I cut half an inch off the upper pintle so the rudder will be easier to ship. There's still lots of pintle there:

Next is to figure the best size and shape for the tiller. Another beautiful piece of John's fir is the blank. In the next pic, the mizzen mast step looks like it might be the lower gudgeon but it isn't:

On the other end of the boat, the stem head fitting is fitted, the eye bolt in the stem is fixed, and there's that shiny big foredeck cleat again:

She's winkin' at ya! ;-)

Keel Repair

The plan to bend in plywood across the top of the keel didn't work, as there wasn't enough of the keel to fasten to. So I just started layering up the bottom of the boat over the keel with 3/8" plywood.
Layer 1:

Layer 2 (getting wider):

I finally figured out how to do what I wanted to do by layer 3, and used much less epoxy and more wood. One and one-eighth inches of wood and epoxy in total were added, with a layer of 9-oz cloth over all. The ground-away butt blocks were replaced with two or three layers of 4" glass tape in epoxy:

Next came a re-make of frame 5, making sure to keep the floor boards at the same heights:

Success!

And here's how it looked from the outside. I put one layer of 9-oz cloth over the wound. I'd like to put more layers on, but working upside-down under a trailer is not conducive.

John gave me a nice piece of fir to replace the excised keel. That's the next and final step in fixing the keel rot.

The new theory of how the rot came to be goes as follows: The boat was meant to be kept in a garage, and the corners of the decks and cabin weren't waterproofed. When the boat was kept outside under a tarp, water got in through the tarp (they always leak, especially on the tight corners) and collected in the bottom of the boat, eventually making its way out through the keel (maybe down a screw that had been worked loose by one of the trailer rollers) and allowing rot to start.

Foredeck cleat

Original foredeck cleat:

 
Oversize holes drilled for new foredeck cleat:

The holes were filled with epoxy and glass, then re-drilled to fit the bolts on the new cleat:

I don't think this cleat looks too massive, as I thought it might. (Updated to add better photo of cleat.)

Keel Rot

When I took the several pieces of trim off the bottom of the keel back in the winter, I discovered a small area of rot in the keel. This is what it looked like from underneath after a little digging:

(The green is the tarp seen through a hole in the keel.)

And here it is from the inside after starting to dig there:

(The green light is from the tarp.)

Below is after more digging. All of the wood exposed here was wet. This is the only photo I have that shows the keelson and the #5 frame before I took them out (#5 frame is at bottom of photo):

So I ended up taking out the #5 frame and the keelson pieces between frames 4 and 6.

Pretty harsh when you have to destroy the boat you've put so much time and effort into!

The epoxy and glass on top of the keel between frames 4 and 6 eventually got peeled back all the way so that the underlying wood could dry out. The #5 frame in the middle will be cut back even further. Some of the area next to the keel is just the glass and epoxy on the outside, with no wood left on it! I've found that since I glassed all of the corners of the cabin, there's no water in the bilge after it rains.

The view above is looking aft. The plan is to bend in a couple layers of ¼" ply in the marked area, after taking the frame and the butt blocks back further, then re-build the #5 frame and the keelson on top of that. Lots of epoxy goop will be used, of course.

I'm glad I didn't do this part before doing all the glass taping on the outside, as I might have got too discouraged and quit. As it is, I'm now quite experienced with the grinder, and I know my back can handle the amount of work I'm putting in daily, so I feel confident that this is going to have a positive ending. :-) It's been great to have a boat builder on hand to give me his input. I wouldn't have thought of bending the ply in, but it makes total sense, since it joins the sides in one piece.

New Rudder 2

In the first photo below you may be able to see the bolts in the bolt holes of the pintles. I cut them off so that they're just pins now, going through only the pintles and the ¾" core, not the whole rudder. Because the rudder blade will be right against one side of the rudder head, I didn't want pintle bolt heads or nuts to be sticking out and getting in the way. I'm confident that the assembly will be quite strong without having the pintles bolted through the cheeks, what with all of the epoxy that will be in there.

Thank God for John Booth and his shop! John showed me how to rout out the channels for the pintle arms and set me to it. I think I did a good job for first time routing! But I think I put the bottom pintle on the top. I have an idea that the bent-out one is supposed to be the one you find the bottom gudgeon with. Too late now!

Below, the port side of the rudder head is being glued on (the bottom layer wasn't glued up at this point):

You can see how the pintle disappears into the wood.

The rudder head is finished now, except for some filing and sanding. I'll post a photo when I've smoothed some of the rough edges...

Starboard Sheer taping

This was done on Wednesday. Two layers of 3" cloth went on at the same time. The hammer is there because I put some silicon-bronze ring nails in to bring the deck and side back together in about that spot I'm stopped at in the top photo.