The Skeg

It's been pretty warm around here the last few days. Yesterday it hit 102F with the humidex. About 30 C if I remember correctly. Wasn't much better the day before.

I did tinker with my new welder and added a couple new brackets to the dingy trailer. These will support new beds for the dingy to rest on.

New brackets to hold bunks for dingy

They were my first welds with this little inverter welder. I don't think I've stick welded anything since I was a deck hand on the Griffon way back in the early 80's. Mel used to call me 'Sparky'!

Anyhow, today started out with thunder showers and then after it cleared up it got muggy as h*ll. I puttered around till afternoon then started to lay out the skeg on the sheet of aluminum I have.

I drew up some plans for the skeg way back when the boat was still upside down. That would have been the time to attach it but I wasn't thinking that far ahead. Couple of weeks ago I stumbled across the deal on the 3/8" plate so that sort of kick started it a bit.

Laying out lines to cut for skeg

Definitely not a precise piece of fabrication but layout is simple & straight forward. Measure thirteen hundred times then cut once! Usually works! *sigh*

Parts laid out & nested

Various pieces drawn & nested as best I could. I left lots of extra 'meat' for grinding & fine tuning etc.

The circular saw works fine for straight lines. Goes through this stuff like butter! The curves required the jig saw. It worked but it was slow & painful. Destroyed my old Crappy Tire jig saw after two cuts! I think they have a lifetime warranty though!  ;-)

Jig sawing essential for curves

So here's what the thing looks like as designed.

Sketchup design for skeg

And here's the results of my aluminum butchering.

The skeg

And from the other side.

The skeg

So the plan is I'll get it all cleaned up and the edges to be welded beveled.  I'll tack it together with my new handy dandy high voltage metal fusing machine then take it to the metal shop to have it properly welded together.

In case you missed it here's a video clip from yesterday when the Project Manager takes a wander though the work site to check up on things.

That's it for now. Hopefully things will cool down a bit and we can get back to fiberglassing the inside of the big tub!

Standby....