Fairing the chines

Two hours on saturday to fair the vaka's chines. Just elbow grease, rasp, Surforms, sanding board (60 and 120 grit).

Here's a view of the centerboard slot which is a bit uncomfortable to work on due to the tight space. We used the power drill with a grinding bit first, and then rasp and sanding paper.

And here's a view of the stem/bottom junction

Total work time to date: 346 hours.

Main hull: rounding the chines

Two hours today to start rounding the chines of the vaka. The designer recommends to round to a radius of a billiard ball, i.e. about 3 cm. This means removing quite a lot of material from the chine. I used my old power plane set to remove about 1 mm on the first pass, and then finished with 0.5 mm.

Here's the starting situation on one of the chines

and here it is after the first pass (actually several passes). The final depth was such to almost reach the chine log underneath.

On the other chine, at the first butt block, some sparks and strange noises announced a forgotten screw, which I removed with a plier after digging some wood around and warming it up with the soldering iron.

After the power plane, I made a few passes with the long Surform. I produced a huge amount of sawdust

And here's the final result. We're not done yet: we still have to round it better and to fair evrything with the sanding board.

Total work time to date: 344 hours.

Main hull bottom glued

Five hours of work today. We first prepared the panels, sanding the contact surfaces and boring those along the edges on 15 cm centers for the screws that go into the stringers. Here's a pic of the central panel which also shows the large glueing surface around the centerboard slot.

The central panel was the first to go on. Here is a pic taken just before the lunch break which also shows one of the two, 2 cm thick butt blocks. Also visible are the 14 permanent SS screws (5x40 mm) which go through the 12 mm bottom into the centerboard trunk logs. Pretty strong, isn't it?

In the afternoon we glued the other two panels. In total we prepared about 1 kg of resin thickened with microfibers and some Cabosil. Quite some glue oozed out of the seams which we cleaned, but most probably some oozed also on the inside, and there's nothing we can do with that. At this time, the low half of the boat is hermetically sealed. Once the boat is turned rightside up, we'll install two hatches in the cockpit sole. Here's a view of the hull with the milestone beer.

Total work time to date: 342 hours.