I have hardener on order and I was expecting it to arrive today but it did not turn up so now it seems that Wednesday will be more likely. Not to worry, I have plenty to do and not much time to do it (with work) so I don’t think this will be much of an inconvenience. What did arrive today was a gift from Marcus in W.A. He has already built his daggers and I have been using his method to shape and construct them. But for the most part I am ahead of him in the build so he reads this site and gets insights as to how to do various things on the build, which after all is the intention of the site. So as a thank you he has sent me over some sheaves that I was having trouble locating over here. It is ironic though that he would send me parts for the daggerboard as a thank you for me doing this site when I used his method to make the daggers and his guidance, advise and photos in emails helped me very much. So thank you Marcus.

Armed with the sheaves I am again following Marcus’ lead and making sheave boxes to fit into the daggers rather than follow the plans and just cut slots in the boards to fit the sheaves. The major advantage of doing this is the seal I will get in the slots by gluing in these boxes and the bond I will get by screwing as well as gluing the half sheave into the box rather than just gluing it into the slot. They are super simple to make, I just cut a 20mm piece of ply to the correct width and rounded the corners, I am making 2 size boxes one for a full sheave on an axle and a half sheave to be glued in.

Once I had cut and rounded the mold I cut a slot down the middle, the purpose of the slot is to allow the mold to compress when I try to remove the glass boxes from the mold when it is set. I then covered the mold in clear plastic sticky tape to stop the glass from sticking to the mold. It was then a simple task to wet out some glass tape and wrap it around the mold. I put some peel ply around them more to keep the glass tight on the mold than any other reason although it will make gluing them into the daggers easier. Once they set hard I will pull them off the molds (which may include a hammer!) and cut them to size, I have made 2 of each size, the smaller is in one 200mm tape piece and will be cut in half to make the 2, the larger is 2 separate 100mm tapes around the mold.

I then gave the bogged foredeck a light sand. You really cant fair the panel off the boat because when you glue the panel onto the boat it may push up or pull down and in small ways and be pulled out of fair. So I have really just taken the highs off, there is still enough bog to get it fully fair on the job. I used the rupes to get it started then I used the long board.