seat tops, rudder blade, and centerboard

This picture shows the rudder blade roughed into shape. I used my block plane to remove some material and then my Makita sander/polisher with a seven inch 36 grit disk. I'll have to clean it up a little with a lighter sander and fill some nail holes in it, but it's close to finished.








This is the centerboard roughed into shape. I took these pictures about a week ago. About two days ago, I was doing some more work on the centerboard and one of the glue joints failed (it's a lot of strips of wood glued together with epoxy). I think what went wrong was that the wood (mostly "yellow pine") drew too much of the epoxy into the wood, thereby starving the joint. I did precoat the wood with epoxy, but I did not thicken the second coat with anything.

Several of the joints failed, but some did not. I beat the laminated pieces that remained intact against my table to see if they would come apart, after I heated them with the heat gun. I beat them and beat them and beat them. The joints did not fail and there was no sign on the wood of the abuse - pretty tough stuff.

I put the pieces back together by first sanding them, second, wiping them with acetone, third, pre-coating with epoxy, and fourth, gluing with epoxy thickened with cabosil.
These next two pictures show the seat tops cut to shape. I will not glue until after my centerboard trunk and some other parts are installed. I think the boat looks good with them in though.