Building the skeg

Progress has been slow.  Besides all the activities mentioned in my last post, it is Spring and the yard work must be done. Katie and I have been spending our time getting the shrubs trimmed, the mulch beds prepared and everything cleaned up for the season.  In addition, I opened our pool which looked like a large petri dish when I took the cover off. It turns out the water has a TDS reading (TDS = Total Dissolved Solids) that is too high.  This condition prevents the chemicals from working properly and makes it hard to keep the pool looking good.  The only solution is to drain the pool and refill and then restart with all the needed chemicals. 

Anyway, back to the boat.  I have had time to work on a few things.  I have been coating the hull with resin to get sufficient build up to cover the cloth and allow sanding it down smooth prior to bottom paint.  I believe I need one more coat of resin.

I also cut out and built the skeg.  The skeg is a shallow, long keel that gets attached to the bottom to keep the boat from sliding sideways in turns.  I cut this from white oak and then routed the edges and rounded the ends. I also drilled and countersunk for screws every 8".  This is what it looks like.  It is 9' long and about 2" high at the thickest part.  The end you see here will go towards the rear of the boat.

The bottom of the boat is a "V" that varies from front to back, so attaching the skeg requires a little more work.  Some builders grind the bottom of the boat flat where it attaches.  I decided to cut a V groove in the bottom of the skeg.  I measured the "V" angle at the front and the rear where it attaches and then took the average.  I figured the epoxy plus cabosil mixture will fill in the rest.  I used this sacrificial wooden fence on my table saw to cut the groove. The height is half the skeg thickness and the angle is half the angle (6 degrees).

This yielded the desired V groove.  It isn't perfect because the first pass changed the wood dimension slightly so the second cut was a little different.  I'm not too worried.  The epoxy will fill the gaps.   I just need to make sure it is square when I mount it.

While not necessary, I decided to cover the skeg with fiberglass cloth to provide additional protection to the skeg.  It was a bit of a mess to attach the cloth because the surface area is small and it moved around as you added resin.  I had to do final smoothing with my hands (vinyl gloves required) and apply equal pressure and opposing motion on each side. After a bit of futzing, it was as good as I could get so I let it set up. 

After this sets, the excess will get trimmed and additional coats of resin applied.  I plan to attach the skeg and then put the final coat of resin on shortly.  Once that coat sets up, I can do final sanding and paint the bottom.  Then its flipping time!