Lots of Sanding

Yesterday, I spent about 2 hours sanding all of the parts I epoxied on Saturday to get them ready to start gluing the keel together.
No Pictures today.

Layering on the Epoxy

Yesterday was spent putting at least two layers of epoxy on all of the parts of the keel to be assembled next. About 3.5 to 4 hours were taken in between coats to allow it to gel up before the next layer of epoxy was applied. Extra care was taken to coat all of the edges of the plywood pieces as they seem to just soak up the epoxy. The attached pictures are after the first coat. The second coat sealed it much better, although there are a few spots I will sand a little bit and add a third coat. This is the only time to seal these parts as it will be completely sealed up once it is attached to the bottom of the boat. There are no second chances to make sure you sealed everything. I am also thinking about fiberglassing the entire inside of the keel, but I will at least fillet and tape all of the corners.

Next to assemble and epoxy the entire keel together.

All Screwed Up! Then Not.

After much time doing other things like trying to finish the RV-9A airplane in the garage, I finally got around to attaching all of the keel stiffeners in place. It took exactly 198 screws, sheetrock and wood screws. I wanted to make sure that everything would be really tight once it is epoxied together. I used the wood screws for the sides and bottoms of the keel stiffeners.

I used the sheetrock screws for most of the rest of it, but they will not be used anymore.

After I completely assembled everything and made sure it was all straight, I disassembled it all to start the gluing up process.

First to epoxy together are the keel stiffeners and Douglas Fir pieces. All of the areas to be glued together were first coated with the epoxy then let sit for a couple of minutes and coated a second time before being screwed together. This is because the epoxy will quickly soak into the plywood and Douglas Fir pieces, and you don't want any of the glue joint to be lacking the epoxy. I then took a squeegee and used the epoxy squeezed out to coat some of the parts being glued together.

They were left overnight to let the epoxy harden, and then I started taking out the sheetrock screws, where I had two of them break off. As stated before in a previous post, I thought this would happen, so I am no longer going to use them. They are WAY too weak. I also have no real good way to remove the part of the screw that broke off, so they will be epoxied over several times to seal them real good. Everything will be coated two or three times with epoxy anyway.

Now to start epoxying the keel itself together.