Shelter Island Boat Works

Following the offsets from the drawings I laid out the inner keel. I found an 18′ long piece of 3/4″ thick straight grained mahogany and planed it down to 5/8″. After a rough cut, a block plane brought it down to a faired profile line.

The next step was laminating the inner and outer stem with thickened epoxy. The inner stem was bent around a mold (slightly adjusted for minor springback). To alleviate too much springback, the laminations were planed down to 1/4″ thick. It took quite a few laminations to achieve the thickness required. After the lamination, they were planed to the required overall width.

The main mast step was complicated. It required a short lamination, to abut the inner keel. The padded sides of solid mahogany protruded slightly beyond the lamination. This allowed the inner stem to fit snugly into a small recess. The hole for the mast seat was laid out from scaling the drawings and was cut into the padded sides. A drain hole was drilled through the face of the mast step into the mast seat hole. The whole assembly was then screwed and epoxied together.

The inner keel was dry fit onto the molds and calibrated to assure all station points were constant vertically from the strongback to the keel. Then the keel was marked along with the centerline through each mold top edge.