Keel roughed out and hull panels stitched

Finally got to dedicate some time to the 550. I spent about another 3 hours finishing the roughing of the keel, the worst places are within 1/16th of the foil templates and with a little more fiddling I should be ready to start glassing. My plan is to do two layers of cloth then fair to the final shape being very careful towards the top end to make sure it will retract.

The keel bulb is the next keel related project. I haven't completely decided what shape I am going to use nor have I determined the attachment method.

I discovered it is possible to stitch the three major hull panels together single handed. I don't recommend it but as long as I went slowly it worked fine.

After stitching panel #1 (the bottom panel) every 6 inches I pre-drilled the holes along the chine of panel 1 and placed the zip ties. It was then a matter of aligning the sides and starting from the bow. I did both sides at once alternating port and starboard doing two holes at a time. With a couple of straps wrapped around the hull to take some of the load it went pretty well.

Once the bow and transom frames were in place I went back and replaced every other tie with a new tie and a piece of 1" PVC cut to about 1-2 inches. This really helped keep the panels butted edge to edge. With the holes drilled 3/4" from the chine edges the ties and PVC help center the joint.

My plan is to start the filleting in a day or so, I'm hoping that as the hull sets in the final shape the panels relax a bit.

I'm also considering re-cutting the bow frame. It is 1 1/2 inch hardwood per the plans but I think I will tapper the aft edge to more closely match the hull panels.

There are photos but they are on my phone, I'll post them when I get the chance.

Finally a little more progress

After a busy month or so I finally got back to work. I've been dreading the keel shaping because there is a lot of material to remove. Yesterday I just jumped in and experimented.

The process I finally settled on was to use a planner set to remove 1/32 and roughed it in going lengthwise. once that was reasonably close I switched to going diagonally removing 1/64 per pass. With practice I could get pretty good results.

After three hours and ~20 gallons of shavings I switched to a belt sander with 6o grit. Another hour and a half and I had the port side roughed to within about 1/16 inch of the final shape and more uniform than I thought it would be.

My plan is to flip the keel and rough in the starboard side before trying to get any closer to the final shape.

I figure another 4-5 hours to rough the rest of the shape and that much again to get it to the final shape for glassing.

I want to have the keel complete before stitching the hull so I have a better idea of the final keel box dimensions.

Oh yeah, the CST bowsprit arrive a couple of weeks ago! Beautiful piece of work! Can't wait to have a boat to put it in! The thinking with ordering early was to have it in hand as the hull is being formed and as additional motivation!

It was too dusty to expose (no pun intended) the camera but I'll take and post photos later this week.