It has been cold – really cold for Weymouth. So much so that my most important boat building equipment froze overnight!. Ice in my espresso machine and kettle. My little space heater has been working hard, but I can’t do any gluing until the weather changes.
If you go back a couple of posts, you will see the pictures of me making a template for the Skeg/Deadwood that, with the hull upside down, fits to the curve of the hull at the bottom and provide a flat surface for keel planks at the top. I am building this from 6 layers of marine ply with a layer or Iroko either side. I need three 12mm holes for bolts (actually studs) to make sure the keel doesn’t fall off. The picture below shows the line of one of the holes – quite long to drill accurately.
A better solution, given that the hole is just over half in one layer of plywood and the rest in an adjacent layer, would be to cut a groove in each, as below, using my router. It is easy to set the correct depth on the router.
When the two layers are matched together (below), a perfectly drilled hole appears!
The picture below shows some of the laminations of the Skeg/Deadwood positioned together with one of the holes showing perfectly central.
There; a major success. I have justified the purchase of another of my toys – I mean essential boatbuilding tools. There will be lots of uses for my router when I get to fitting out.