Could it have been the wine? --- 279 hrs

High water mark.

What a shame, I felt like I was making real progress and a boat was taking shape. The hull sides, keel, stem, stern and BH 4 were wired/screwed together....but there was that problem.

Going backwards:( Notice all the shiny copper wire pieces. 

Once I got the starboard keel backbone out and on the bench it was pretty clear the keel sides did not have a fair curve or even hit the offsets by less than 2mm in 3 or 4 out of 7 reference points. How did this happen? I'll admit, I still drank, red wine, back when these keels were built but I don't think I ever  BWD(built while drunk), but it's the only idea I have to explain the results. After seeing this my head hurts from banging it on the wall. Oh well, I gave up drinking last fall so that excuse can't ever be used again and hopefully this type of bonehead maneuver will not happen again:)

Man, what the hell is going on here?

Next the small circular saw was used to cut out the new curve, then I used a wood chisel to remove the offending material. The curve looks much better now but the proof will be when the hull sides are set.

Now that looks right!!

On Monday I set the keel back in and the starboard side looks great, but the port side is still off. So the only thing to do was take the whole thing apart. Then I spent a day measuring hull sides, bulkheads, and the keel. On the keel I measured the port vs starboard sides every 4-6 inches figuring the starboard side was correct. They were equal to within a mm right up to the last forward 6 inches where the starboard was high by a couple mm. But just looking at both sides, the curves both looked fair. I wasn't sure if this was enough to cause the problem.

This is what the fit should look like. Now to get the port side to match. 

Even though the side to side difference didn't seem significant, I did clean up this small error. Then it was time to rewired/screw the hull sides together, reset in the cradles and finished the screws in the keel area. Results...much ,much better. Port/starbroard look good, BH 4 is wired in and the floor bearer is only fractionally high. So now I'm finally ahead of were the stop work occurred, YEAH!!!!!

BH 4 is wired in, and BH 3 is ready, progress!

Also note that I wised up and am using multipart block and tackle to lift/move the hull. At this point I'm able to lift a hull end one handed! This made it really easy to level out the hull fore/aft and get the cradles and keel supports just right:)

Going backwards:( Some days suck. -- 254hrs

I finally got back to Tiki today and figure out what was going on with BH4 floor bearer not landing even with the keel backbone. I then checked BH3 and it also was off:( The answer is in these pictures...

BH3 area. There shouldn't be a 1/2" gap

Forward of BH3, end of keel sides.

Those hull gaps then cause this:(

Looking back, I had problems with building keel backbone a couple years ago. I couldn't understand the plans well enough to get the curve correct for the keel sides. I don't remember if I understood at the time but these sides are where the hull sides land so the curvature is important to allow the the hull top edges to be at the proper height above the keel backbone and the floor bearer to be at the correct height. I suspect this is my problem because when I pulled the port keel up on the bench and measured the six  distances found on the drawing, from the backbone top to the top of the keel sides only one or two were spot on. Then when I checked to see how fair the curve was...well it wasn't:(


So now it's a step back. Tomorrow I'm going to disassemble the starboard hull and free the keel backbone. Then measure, mark and draw a fair curve and add/subtract as needed to have a fair curve for the hull sides to land on.

All in all a pretty depressing day, but I've got a plan which I didn't have this morning and that's progress!

Going 3D!!!! ----180hrs

Today there was a small thrill. The boat build went 3D! We set the keel up in the hull cradles then test fit bulkheads 3 and 4 that slot into the keel. Glad that we did since it took some tweaking(sanding) to get the bulkheads to slot all the way down. All it took was seeing bulkhead 3 in place to put the idea of building both hulls simultaneously is out of the question. 

On the bulkhead front, we got the Beckson 8inch inspection plates via the Brown truck so I cut the holes in BH1,BH6, and BH7. Next I did that little extra not in the plans, over drilled the mounting holes, filled with epoxy, and drilled the final holes. Now the plates are set aside for few months. 

Keel Backbone - 9 Hours

The first two sheets of 9mm plywood are cutup into boat parts. In particular the backbone, backbone doubler, and keel sides as named on the plans. Transferring a scaled picture(1:10) of a part to plywood at full scale, I believe this is called lofting, is a little tricky the first time through. For every piece I would expect a station, a point along the x axis, and an elevation, a point along the y axis, to describe a part. With the keel curved profile there doesn’t seem to be enough information to draw the curve or more likely I can’t glean it from the plans.  Now the curve on the bottom of the keel may not seem critical but the parts layout on sheet 2 of the plywood leaves very little room for error. Sheet has four keel sides and two forward backbone doubles crammed on it.

Lessons for the Day:
1.  I think that with all the fiddling with these curved "best fit" parts, it probably would have been better to cut out a template on some scrap 1/8” plywood to make sure of fit before advancing to the expensive plywood.

2.  I can cut a much more accurate line using my 5-1/2” Roybi circular saw than my Roybi Jig Saw. I think I’m doing fine on a long cut with the jig only to look back and see the drunken sailors walk. Then out comes my Roybi 3”x18” Belt Sander to throw that sailor in the brig.

Buying and using the Roybi 5-1/2” circular saw was a great tip from Scott Williams Element II Tiki 26 blog. Thanks Scott!