Snow on Mauna Kea after last night's wind storm.

 Fastened the the shear beams to the stem in preparation to finish up front panels.  Few more days and layer one should be in place.

Moving right along the strip and spilling is much easier towards the bow as opposed to the aft sections that have the tight turn.  It will likely get more difficult to keep the boards behaving towards the transom.  Some long hypodermic needles arrived so I was able to fill glue inside a void in the keelson.  The aft planking will now continue.  It was held up waiting for that task to be complete.

The staple guns have been acting up.  I really like the Dewalt stapler as it has a powerful hammer and pounds 9/16" staples all the way through the keelson.  It is easy to load but the first one I bought failed after ~ 1000 staples.  The release mechanism appeared to have worn and would not lift the spring anymore accept every 3-4 attempts, enough to drive you nuts.  There is a lifetime warranty so I shelved it, bought another and picked up a 5k staple box of 10mm T50s.  I also bought an electric Stanley and will try it tomorrow.  The Dewalt is beautifully built and feels tough.  The release mechanism parts are hardened steel so it is troubling as to what the root issue is.  It takes getting used to as the staple exit is not close to the edge so you need to develop a fell for where to place the gun.

Attached transom at the keelson  without issue.          I figured I would hold off until the molding was 50%.  Stripped two more sheets of ply into planks.  This will be enough to finish the first layer of ply. Here is the hole at the laminate void. I am not worried about voids as the boat stays out of the water.

Scarf tool for 3mm marine ply sheets.  I will use this to build up 8 more strips then cut up a new 4x8 sheet tomorrow.   

Last time the keelson will be out alone.  Put a coat of epoxy all over.

Keelson now mounted and strapped in place with metal gussets.  Added some plastic sheets over the mold and preparing for laying ply.

Started the skin installation.  Takes a bit of finesse to lay these down flat but the process is getting smoother.  The strips are continuously twisting as they lay down and the slightest error lifts one edge or the other.  The form is not perfect so takes a bit of care to stay on a fare line.  At the sheer the strips are clamped and stapled but not glued.  As the second layer comes along I will remove only the staples required.  Wondering how much spring back there will be but that is certainly a long way off, this is slow going.  Work should require approximately 280 strips, 4 strips / hour, 7 ml epoxy / strip. Staple gun noise limits work to before 8pm :(   Using 5/8" brads and 12 mm heavy duty T50 staples. Arrow stapler is pretty good, Powerone stapler was weaker than the arrow, and a Dewalt is working pretty well after taking back the first one I bought.  It would not pass staples.  Plan to put together a scarfing jig to make more strips with the leftovers tomorrow.
 

There is about 1 hour worth of clean up on the keelson edge for the ply sheets to attach to.  The transition from rabbet to lap is going to be tricky and the bow section had a bit of misalignment in Z that I am fighting.  Decided to cut it down about 3 mm to get the profile to match the section profiles otherwise the surface will go flat or cup in right near the keelson.  The shear ledge board (name??)  is fitted at the transom and stem and the overall length came in dead on.  These boards will remain unattached at both ends and not glued during the skin job.  They have been screwed to the mould form all along.  I am considering burying the first ply layer in the bow area with a rabbet between stem and section 1.  I think I will hold that off until the ply pieces approach the stem then cut it in place.  Not easy or easy to bomb!  Time to pick up the ply sheets and get the show rolling.

Cleaning up the details, they just don't end.  Attached transom to mold and adjusted mold profile with shims under each batten to match the transom profile wedge.  Fitted shear to transom and now moving back to stem to fit that intersection.  Thinking of gluing gussets along the length of the shear to hold it in place at each station.

Thanks Richard, these clamps are great!!

This is almost ready now but will need to add a wedge shaped strip along the flange to match the mold profile.  I chickened out on making a 6 mm outer face supported by the ribbing.  It probably does not save much on weight but I did not want to cut up that large an area out of solid wood.  On the plus side the face and flange edge provide a stair-step interface for the two layers of the hull to contact with.  I used 5 #4 brass screws in this assembly.  Need to see if that is safe to leave in place or if they might create problems down the line.

Transom work started.  The baseline reference is offset 38 mm from back panel of mold assembly. The transom will consist of a web structure of thin ply with the outer face 9 mm thick.

Back in mold and, trued up, re-leveled and marked.   Ready for remove and more shaping.

Shaping of keelson.  Started a first rough in of the keel shape and it is ready to go back in the mold and recheck the rabbits or landings.  The leveling of the keel within the mold is likely but it should be close with the previous shims.

Next time need to level keelson before putting in all the battens.  Knew it would be a problem but ignored the thought.  Little helpers set shims and wedges at each station and tuned in the offset from the baseline.  Most are within <3 mm but the 8-7-6 stations again were troublesome.  Unfortunately there is a bit of stress in the keelson laminate as it is clamped in the form.  More tuning has slowly arrived at a good compromise.  I switched the baseline to mono-filament line, aligned the laser to the form then found the keelson center-line dead on.  The mono-filament was aligned with that and heights taken starting with 381 mm at transom and 851 mm at stem.  

Now the height tuning has really only taken 2-3 hours.  After discovering some twist that was removed a line was transferred from the batten form to the edge of the laminate.  The laminate has been removed and is ready for some initial planing / sawing.  No progress on transom assembly but hope to start cutting that up next week.  Once the keelson is cut up a bit it goes back and re tuned to the form for a finer planing then I will let the router loose on the skin joint and see where we are,