Adventures in drilling, and some progress

Final work to finish bulkheads before 3D.  Cut out inspection ports in Bulkheads 1 and 4.  Installed them on the vertical face of the bulkhead instead of seat tops since the interior will be painted and seat tops will be varnished, hopefully the white will blend in and visually not break up the beauty of the wood.  Down the road if there is a problem I can always install more on the seat tops.  Planning to screw and caulk them in instead of bedding in the epoxy or 3M 5200 in case they discolor or become brittle they will be a bit easier to replace.

Daggerboard and rudder are at final thickness after sanding and planing.  Next I cut out angles at top/ bottom/ trailing edge and started shaping the leading edge of the rudder with the templates.

Finally the bulk of my time has been spent drilling holes in tiller and transom to get all the hardware aligned and mounted.  Unfortunately, despite my previous experience drilling straight and true holes from gunsmithing, I drilled 2 crooked holes.   Even with straight sharp bits, a drill with bubble levels, proper measurement, piece being clamped level and light drilling pressure, still crooked holes.  Best I can surmise is the tiller assembly is not perfectly square to itself...So I filled the holes with epoxy & wood flour and learned some good lessons!

Getting ready to cut out holes

Bulkheads 1 & 4 inspection ports cut out.  Once it gets warmer I will install them with hardware and caulk after painting.

Beautiful offcuts...

Daggerboard

and Tiller

Finally, the drilling saga...First set of holes for the gudgeon in the bottom of the picture went great, however the mistake in drilling the gudgeon in the top of the picture can just barely be seen.  One trick that helped was to use the entire setup assembled to keep everything aligned.

The other essential was a drilling guide since the whole assembly does not fit on the drill press.  This is a small piece of Ash drilled on the drill press then clamped in place as a guide for the drill bit.

 

Installing pintles on the transom.

Successful install...whew!  It is straight, centered and has good clearance.

Trying on the rudder for size.