Skeg complete

The pieces are on, let the sanding commence.  I'm hoping to be ready to start painting in a couple of weeks.

It's still upside down.

After glassing the hull, I still needed to glass the transom.  I didn't want to overlap the tape and deal with the ensuing ledge it would create, so I used the heat gun and cut a strip of glass and pulled it off.

This gave me a nice clean edge to work up to.  I laid the cloth on the transom, overlapping the cut edge, and wet it out.  Once the epoxy started to set I cut the glass back to the the line.  The end result turned out nice.

You can see the line because when I cut the glass off I scored into the wood.  However, it's smooth to the touch so once it is painted over the seam will be invisible.

I plan on varnishing the transom, so I've been trying to make sure it stays looking nice.  So far so good.

After sanding the hull smooth after glassing I spread on another light coat of epoxy, which I will sand again before painting.  I may do this many times; it depends on how much I end up caring about getting a very smooth paint job.

Next up was making the keel runner. It took a while as it is a long piece of wood that needed to be cut, shaped and glued.  This is it being glued in place.  The toughest part was cutting out the slot for the centerboard, as it was difficult to get a tool in the slot to clean it up.

Then I made the skeg...twice.  I first made it out of a 2 part lamination of 3/8"  MDO.  After making it I decided I'd rather use the better marine plywood I had, as I had several long, narrow pieces of scrap that would work, so I mad a 3 part lamination of 1/4" marine ply.  The next day I epoxied on a wood strip to cover the end grain of the plywood, as it is susceptible to water ingress.

I did add a clamp to replace the duct tape after taking the picture.  After letting it set overnight I cleaned it up and glued it to the keel runner.  It has a slight bend in it, due to the unnoticed fact that the table I laminated it on had a bit of a bow.  To help straighten it and hold everything in place while the epoxy was setting, I nipped the heads off some small nails and tapped them into the keel runner.

This allowed me to take the bow out of the skeg when I tapped it down onto the nails.  A bunch of epoxy and it's in place.

I'll need to do some cleanup work and increase the size of the fillets as well as round the edges and smooth the transition to the transom, but it's basically done, so long as it stays in place while the epoxy sets.  Along with the pins it was weighed down.  I made sure it was vertical by by using a level and a wedge with a heavy weight.  You can get an idea of it from the picture.

At this point I'm ready to start prepping for painting.  That's likely to take a while, but I'm hoping to have it painted before the end of the month.  The plan is at least 2 coats of primer (the first might be sanded off, and then 2 coats of paint.