Lead Keel bending!

Today I made a template from the lead keel and fitted it on top of the boat keel and deadwoods. Unfortunately, I didn't take a photo of the first template on the boat, but it showed that to get it to fit,  I would have to remove a lot of stock from the keel filler and even further down past the filler into the keel.

The problem was that the lead keel has a straight edge which needs to face up to the curve of the boats keel.  There is a keel filler part which is designed to be planed to accomadate the curve, but my gap was even larger than the keel filler.

Curve bent into straight edge of keel

 So I decided to see if I could bend a slight curve into the lead lead.  Supporting it at about 18" from either end, so as not to bend just the thin ends of the keel, I measured the distance from the floor and took a few wild jumps on to the middle of the keel.  Surprise - surprise, it moved about 1mm.  So egged on by this modest success  I enlisted some help and two of us jumped on it and manged to get a curve into the straight side of the lead keel, which made for a much better fit - as the new template shows. Thankfully no pictures of the jumping  madness!

Pic showing template at back of keel shows original line of keel before bending.

This shows how the keel will sit lower down on the deadwood - where previously, I would have had some gaps

New template made off curved lead - here you can see where bottom of lead sits higher over the boat keel, such that no stock has to be removed from the boat keel.

Template sitting lower down on deadwoods.  This will allow me recut topside of deadwood for a snug fit to the lead keel.

Now I have some final fairing on the keel filler to do and should be able to finally fit the outer stem, forefoot filler, keel filler and deadwoods, which will bring me ever closer to turning over the hull..yeah!

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