Stem & Transom

The last few weeks have been productive, with progress on the Auk’s keel, stem and transom.

The inner keel, or hog, has a fairly strong bend in the aft section – to cope with that, we did a partial rip cut to half the thickness, stopping the cut just forward of the tricky section.  It now bends into place, and we will apply glue in the cut, and clamp it into shape.

 

The gorgeous sapele transom got cleaned up after gluing, and looks spectacular!  The grain really comes alive as you move your head around, and the grain catches the light differently.  When it gets varnished, that should be even more dramatic!

After a bit of a tuneup of the bandsaw, the transom got cut to shape.  The edges will need to be beveled when the planking begins.

The stem is made up of strips of sapele, cut thin, and epoxy laminated on the form that we made.

Last week we formed the inner stem – yesterday we used that as the form for the outer stem.  The inner stem will take the planking, and after planking is complete, the outer stem will be fastened in place over the planking.

That beautiful transom was clamped into position, and has been marked for the hog – but nobody has yet been bold enough to cut into that nice chunk of wood!  We’ll measure a few more times, and THEN.

Over on Arnt & Valerie’s boat Anja, the new cabin is coming together nicely – Arnt brought the pieces down for a test fit, and his work with the templates sure paid off – a perfect fit!  Beautiful work!!

We have produced a video instructing how to rig our sailboat Ragna.  Benjamin has finished the video editing, and has posted it on Youtube:  https://youtu.be/QyndJBpjh0o   Be sure to take a look, and get familiar with it!  As a member of Oarlock & Sail Boat Users Group, you have access to this boat and the others in our small fleet – we’ll be doing some more instructional videos soon.