Last summer Christian (CG #103) and I casted the keel bulbs. See the documentation here: https://minisailer.ch/?p=160

Now they have to be planned and balanced. We have built a grinding mount to plane the surface. We filled the holders for the bulbs at the end of the box with plaster. With this helper we were able to trim the keel bulbs with the electric planer to a weight of 70 kg. When planning, it is necessary to put some oil on the surfaces to make the work easier. Now they have to be drilled for the 3 bolts to mount them on the keel fin. A tough sunday workout for Christian who has lifted the bulbs more than 50 times and planed off all together 15 Kg of lead from all 4 bulbs.

This week I made good progress with the boatbuild. I am very happy to have the Selden mast and the Blueshark parts in my workshop. The packages arrived this week. Many thanks to Jane for the logistics. It is very motivating and a good feeling when the parts from all over the world arrive here in time.

I made frame A in a similar way as frame E. I do overlapping joinery at the joints of the slats. Frame A is a watertight bulkhead. So it is closed with a 8mm Okoume plywood sheet. I add 10mm in the thickness of the douglas fir slats (50mm instead of 40mm) for reinforcement reason in this area of the cockpit floor while the construction is heavy loaded from the main sheet traveller. In addition it will help when the crew is jumping around in the cockpit. I spent approx. 30 hours of work.

Frame A while assembling on the workbench in my basement workshop.

I choose Frame E as the first frame to be done. I fixed my drawn 1:1 plan on the workbench. The planed Douglas fir slats are cut to size, halved joint to strengthen the connection and then rounded on the insides of the frame with the router. This saves me time later when I have to sand it. The slats where glued with epoxy and fixed with clamps to the workbench while curing. Then the plywood gussets where glued and screwed to the joints. Finally I filled the cavities of the joints / plywood gussets with Styrodur and all corners with a microballon thickened epoxy putty. All together it took me approximately 30 hours of work including wood cutting. Later before mounting the frames on to the jig, I will put on 2 epoxy coatings.

Lateral view to the douglas fir joinery on the starboard top corner of frame E.