Ruining Wood

I'm getting to the stage where I will start assembling the various odd shaped bits of wood onto a frame to make the skeleton for my boat.

In order to do this I need to build the Center Board Case, as two of the frames but up against this.

The Center Board case needs to be glassed. Since I'm making up the Case, it seemed appropriate to make up the Centerboard at the same time.

This means I need to Shape and Glass the Center Board, and Glass the Case.

I have never used Epoxy before for much beyond fixing the pendulum of a clock - please don't ask. So I reasoned that I would make up a test rudder from cheap ply instead of the good marine stuff, and glass it. This would be a learning experience, and I would not ruin anything expensive.

Along the way I figured out the following

* Prime the epoxy pumps by pumping out a little into a scrap cup and bin it. It means wasting a little epoxy, but not nearly as much as if you pump out too little hardener and work everything up only to find it doe not set.

* Epoxy goes a lot further than you'd expect. I made up what I thought was about half what I needed for my test piece only to have twice what I needed.

* How to glass the trailing edge is not obvious - try this link, go to the foils section - mothboat

* You can use the glue lines in the plywood to keep you rudder or center board symetrical.

I made a lot of mistakes, which was good, it meant I learned at least what not to do.