Keel tidy, roll over/support cradle

After running a thick fillet on the keel to hull join, sanding it and doing a couple of quick fairing layers on the bottom it was time to prep for roll over.

Firstly, borrowed a laser level and using the waterline on the transom frame ran the waterline and taped it. So far two people have said it now looks like a boat so heading in the right direction!  From the front:

Looking across at the transom.

Next was to finish drilling up the keel bolt holes from inside.  These are 10mm with four up front in frames 3, 4 and 5 and four down the back in frames 7 and 8.  One of them was a bit too close to the outside of the keel so I am just going to epoxy in the rod to provide sideways support without going into the lead keel.  All the others were good.

Below is a picture of the extension welded onto the drill 500mm to get the up through the keel stack.  Note this was cleaning out the hole from on top after drilling all the way through the cross piece on the frame and the keel.

Once the holes were finished I used 8mm rod as temporary braces which were tightened and then cut off.  These will be replaced when the keel is attached.

The building cradle was then slowly constructed around the hull and across on top of the building jig.  The corners on both sides were reinforced by overlapping 12mm ply with the structural rated timber and through bolting with two 10mm bolts.   Large screws were also placed through the ply into the cross pieces of the cradle wherever the ply touched the wood.

Cross pieces were batten screwed (75mm long in multiples) in at the pivot points, and also between the second pivot point and both sides of the keel.

The cross pieces were also screwed down onto a piece that was screwed into frame 6 as well as the building jig.

Below shows the hull braces between the gunwhale area and the top chine.  With the upright touching the hull, and shorter pieces above and below this meant three points of contact against the hull on this chine.

Below is a side on shot showing the cross braces (two each side on the uprights and four along parallel with the keel.  In addition you can see the braces down onto the bottom of the hull front and rear between the keel outside of the bottom, and against the bottom chine.

Final shot is looking from the front, note the pale masking tape showing the waterline.

Next, roll over.