Upper starboard hull half planked

Poor me -- things are busy at work and I didn't touch a piece of foam all week long. :-)

Mid-way through upper hull battens and planking:

This is how it looked after I finished up for tonight:

This is a bit of a minor milestone - I'm done with the foam planking, after four float halves and two main hull halves. Hopefully I'll have time to bog between the planks this week, then laminate first thing next weekend.

I thought I did a good job on the rudder gudgeons last weekend, but after taking a closer look at them it turned out that I didn't trim them very square to the tube. I could make them work, but I figured I wouldn't be very happy about it. So yesterday I made two more gudgeons - my third set, in case anyone's counting. Here's the method I figured out for trimming them:

Have to be careful not to extend the steel rod too far, so the blade doesn't cut into it (didn't happen to me, I'm just mentioning it). This worked much better, I was very pleased with how they turned out.

Glueing the gudgeons onto the foam web:

Next is laminating a layer of C all over the web. On my first bow web (side note: I've done two bow webs, and am thinking of doing another after seeing the nice svelte one on Oliver's boat; mine is kinda chunky) I remember I tried to wrap a gigantic piece of fiberglass all around the entire web. It didn't work very well and Ian's recommendation was to piece several sections around the web - it is perfectly fine as long as you have good overlaps. Here's the first section of C on my rudder web:

The two rectangular pieces of glass went over the gudgeons themselves. I didn't finish covering the entire rudder web yet.

I also poured my daggerboard case keel insert this weekend. I left one spacer in the case as per the plans, and stuffed a long vinyl tube down from the top until it was about 3-4 inches above the bottom:

Rather than place the dry glass at the bottom of the case, I mixed in chopped glass into my resin before pouring it down the tube (either option is fine according to the plans). I dropped down to using medium-speed hardener so that I'd have plenty of time to pour, and to reduce the chances of excess heat. The procedure went very smooth and I now have a nice slab of cured resin at the bottom of the case. By the way, the case is nicely balanced and will stand up by itself on the floor. Also, I weighed the case - came in at 19.4 lbs (8.8kg).

Now that I'm done planking, it raises the question of what will I do with all of the scrap foam I have. After spending a fortune on the stuff, I hate to just throw it away - but I don't want this stuff sitting in my shed forever. Some other builder - one more patient, economical, and cost-conscious than me - could save a bundle, if they were willing to do some work. Anyway, if you're local to the Seattle area and are interested, send me an email. I have one full sheet of A550 3/8", three 1/4 sheet of A1200 3/4" (way over-ordered there), three 1/2 sheets of A500 3/4", and a mixed-up ton of smaller A400\500\550 scraps. Scraps are especially good for flat panels IMO.