It is a dreary, wet and slightly cold day today, not at all conducive to doing anything outside. On the good side, there is no wind ! Still, I dragged myself out to the boat during a tea break and carried out a couple of quick tasks. The first was to cut out a new cardboard template piece and glue it to the bigger template.
Here is the result and as you can see, the template now ends in the expected point.
The second task was to select a chunk of removed Mahogany to use to “repair” the top batten that had to be cut short in order to remove it. This chunk will be used for both sides of the new case.
To be fair, this was not a task that I expected to do today, although it is on my list of tasks, but I tripped over the block of wood during today’s first task which reminded me that it needed to be done.
The third task was to slip a piece of 6mm marine plywood into the slot in the keel and see how much of the bottom lip protrudes. The lip seems to be about 7mm, although it is not easy to measure and thus it does stick out past the 6mm plywood. However, this is good news as I intend to coat the inside of the case with neat epoxy, then 300g biaxial fibreglass cloth, then another layer of neat epoxy and finally a layer of epoxy mixed with graphite powder. I may even apply a coat or two of antifoul after that, I’m not sure about that yet.
All this extra coating on the inside of the case will probably pad it out so that the lip no longer protrudes. This is good news since it means that I do not have to worry about the case sides being too thick, which would be the case if the lip were just 6mm wide.
Time for a cup of tea.