Shaping the daggerboard and mast

July 30, 2011
I finally got motivated to do some more work on the sailing kit.  I had previously glued the daggerboard parts together and today I started shaping it by rounding off the front edge and making a big taper on the back edge.  Following the manual, I drew a line one inch in from the leading edge and three inches in from the back edge, and then used the belt sander to taper the plywood.  I put the daggerboard in the dory to draw a line to show me which part would be in the water and then just stopped the taper when I got to the line.  Okoume is really pretty soft and it didn't take long with the belt sander to do this job.  Then I followed up with the orbital sander to smooth everything out.  I went over everything a second time with fine grit paper, and put the first coat of epoxy on the daggerboard.  I had it hanging from the deck above so that I could do both sides at once.  I was a bit windy today and it kept swinging back and forth but I finally got a coat of epoxy on it.  When I checked it later, I was disappointed to see some runs and it was sticky enough that little black flies were stuck to it like flypaper. Oh well, I was going to sand it anyway before doing another coat.

Sanding the large feathered trailing edge.

Putting the first coat of epoxy on the daggerboard.

I had also previously glued the pieces of the mast together and had the basic shape cut out.  Today I used a power plane and the belt sander to shape it to the template that I had from CLC.  I had to keep carrying it around to the front of the house and trying to fit it into the mast step in the dory.  After three tries I finally had the right shape for the bottom of the mast.  Then I turned my attention to the top of the mast.  I had to get out the template again and draw new lines.  Using the power plane I cut the mast down to the right size, and then finished with the sanders.  Finally I used a router to round off all the edges.  I was surprised how small the top of the mast looks--I hope it holds.  It's nice to have a set of directions to work from; I can trust that someone has worked out all the details and I just need to follow them closely and everything will work OK.

Shaping and rounding off the edges of the mast.