Practical Boat Owner — November 2017

rounding the bilges

Fairing’s an odd sort of job, with much of

what you do making the boat look worse

rather than better as it starts to resemble a

patchwork quilt. However, running your

hand over the result is certainly rewarding

as you feel a smooth, blemish-free surface

beneath.

The most satisfying job by far, though,

was planing the stem. Suddenly this rather

agricultural, square timber took on new life

as a shapely bow ready to carve its way

through the water. It’s improved the

aesthetics of the bow immensely, and

is a reminder of what this boat’s

meant to do – sail.

This was possibly one of the most
satisfying jobs on the boat so far. The
stem, running down to meet the keel, had
been left square while building the hull, so
the challenge was to shape it to provide a
pleasing angle between the two sides of
the hull. It also needed to be left square at
the top in order to accept the bowsprit
stemhead fitting.
We started by deciding the point at which
the square would begin to taper, then set
to work planing. Using a long plane
helped us to follow the angles set by the
bow panels and did most of the work low
down on the stem and along the forefoot,
where we wanted a rounded shape
between the two. We used the plane to

The kit provides two long mouldings to
ease the gap between the keel and hull.
We first dry-fitted them, pulling them into
place with long screws to check the fit
before removing them and gluing them
back into place with epoxy.
The mouldings provide most of the
required curve, but as they don’t taper to a
feather edge there’s some work required
to fair them into the hull and keel on either
side.
We found this was best done in two
stages. The first was to make a tapered
fillet on either side, for which the square

Conclusion

Keel to hull joint

end of a filleting stick proved ideal. The

angle was still too steep, however, so we

used the back edge of a putty knife to

form a curved transition on both sides

using fairing filler.

The final shape to make was the lead

into these mouldings at the forward edge

of the keel. We did this using more epoxy

and fairing filler, formed to shape as best

we could when wet. We then finally shaped

it using sandpaper in a roll to ensure the

correct concave shape. The same

technique was used to fair the fillets we

had applied along the length of the keel.

A filleting stick smoothed the seam well

We used a piping bag

to pipe in a long fillet

to secure and fair in

the keel battens

A mess of epoxy faired front of the keel...

...which could then be sanded smooth

Shaping the stem

take the timber to a point, before rounding
it off using a block plane and sandpaper.
Further up the stem we had to be more
circumspect, so started off by carving a
45° angle into the stem using a
spokeshave. After continuing this a few
inches down the stem, we drew a line
from this to an estimated waterline and
tapered the timber between the two points
to match using a plane.
Once we had the shape we needed, we
sanded the whole area to remove any
irregularities, easing any sharp corners as
we went to improve paint adhesion later
on. We also glued timber fillets in place at
the top of the stem to make it wider, ready
A long plane to transfer the hull angle to stem to acept the stemhead fitting.

We used a spokeshave cut a ‘stopped

arris’ on the stem