The keel sections are getting their final work done in preparation for joining them together. Robin has been working diligently getting the rabbets cut in the aft keel section. Here you can see a series of pocket cuts on the left side of the keel.
On the right side, you can see where he's cut out the wood in between the pockets to make a continuous rabbet.
Cutting the pockets is the tricky part. Each pocket is cut to just the right angle all along the length of the keel, and cut just a little shallow. Once the pockets are cut, the wood between them is cut away with a chisel,
leaving a series of shallow steps with the precisely cut pockets in between. These steps are then carefully planed down to the level and angle of the pockets.
Once everything is planed down to the same level, a few more strokes of the plane brings it all to just the right depth and fairs out any slight uneven spots along the length. That's why we leave the pockets just a little shallow, to allow for this final tuning.
Meanwhile, the stem / fore keel has been getting lots of attention. I mentioned earlier that we use templates to check the shape of this part as we go. Here's a few of them.
By the way, we put the holes in them for easy storage. Bench space is always at a premium.
Each template comes from the shape of the stem and fore keel as they are drawn on the lofting. We also add marks indicating the location of the rabbet top and bottom of the keel (to orient the template). As we shape the part, we check it frequently using the template to make sure the shape is just right.
So, bit by bit, the bevel is cut along the underside of the keel until we get to the area just forward of where we'll cut a scarf joint in the keel.
We chose to leave the area of the scarf un-bevelled for now since it will make a smoother joint if we fair in both sections of the keel after they're joined together. The glue lines along the laminations show up as curves where we cut the bevels in the keel. It's much like a topographic map.
Here's one side of the stem after the bevel has been cut.
The bevel along one side took about a day to cut. The 2nd one took half that time. There's a definite learning curve with these parts. Here it is with both sides cut, looking down along the underside of the fore keel.
You can see the large piles of shavings to the left of the fore keel... the power planer makes quick work of some sections where large amounts of wood need to be removed. You just can't beat a good tool.
While all this was going on, Max has been cutting much smaller bevels along the edges of the floors using planes and spokeshaves.
The number of floors has been growing steadily all week.
And... back to the stem.
After both sides have been tapered, we use the templates to locate the rabbet at various points along the length of the part.
Here, you can see the mark "Rab" on the template. You can also see that the marks "apex" and "eok" (edge of keel) locate the template properly so that the rabbet mark isn't copied over too high or low along the taper.
These marks are then connected using a thin batten to create a smooth, fair line. That line becomes the rabbet line.
In this photo, you can see the corner of the taper, with the rabbet line marked in red below and to the right, and the bearding line sweeping up to the left (also in red.
And that's all the information we need to start cutting the pockets to define the rabbet.
At this point, it's a lot of careful chisel work making each pocket just right right depth and angle, just like Robin was doing.
Moving along...
And then joining the pockets together into the rabbet.
Port side done, starboard side to go.
Meanwhile, back at the lofting.... David, our fearless leader, has tackled the thorny task of expanding the transom.
To expand the transom means to create an accurate drawing of the transom as if it were laying flat on the floor. This allows one to make an accurate pattern of the transom, including the exact bevels you'll need to join this part up with the planking as it comes into the transom. Alan Vaitses said "bevels are devils" and he wasn't kidding.
Now, to complicate matters, Cherokee has a curved, raked transom. That means that the transom curves from side to side (hold your hand out like you're going to shake hands and then cup your fingers slightly... it looks like that) and it also slants downwards at the same time. This presents some very interesting problems for making a flat pattern. If the transom were made of fabric, we could drape it on the floor and see its shape as it unrolls from its curve. But, it's not, so we have to work out how to do this using lofting tricks.
It's the kind of thing that makes your head explode.
That's why we wear hats. It's a precaution to keep the brain bits from going all over the place and adding to our end of day clean up.