Shaping the keel

This jumble of photo's shows the process followed to first rough fair then final fair the keel.
A batten was bent around the molds next to the side of the keel and the curve marked with a pencil to give a line to plane down to.
Then a power plane was used to rough fair the keel. Final fairing was done by hand starting with a no6 plane when a no5, no4, block plane and spokeshave as the twist of the keel got tighter as I got close to the bow.




Lofting the stem was a pain as in the final 6" of the stem and the keel I just couldn't see it shape in two dimensions. This was made worse by the stem and keel joining with a very tight curve, radius roughly2" at the forward end of the water line. So I left plenty of spare material there so I could fair it by eye.

I started by fairing one side by eye using battens as a guide to check fair with the molds. Then I used a profile gauge to transfer the shape to the other side.

Its not perfect but it is as close as I could get it and if you put the profile gauge anywhere on it and transfer it to the other side its a good fit.

That's about it next job is to fit and fair the gripe and cut out the centre board slot.