Cutting Another Big Hole

After doing a bunch more painful sanding and filling in the cockpit, I shifted gears and started to focus on the Bieker designed drop drive.  This part is somehow daunting.  After digging the MDF molds out of hibernation at CSR a few years ago, I dropped them with Jim Betts.  He's built drives for several more boats now, including Terremoto, which just launched locally after her amazing refit.  With too much on my plate, I hired Jim to infuse an extra housing for me.

Kirk picked up the parts in Anacortes and brought them down to the shop in the Raptor van.  I toted them from the loft to the commuter boat, and finally walked them to my house in the stroller.

Here's a look at the primary clamshell after trimming up the flanges, dewaxing, and scuffing.

I joined the halves using high density filler and silica.  I tried to be tidy as sanding in the bottom of a trench is presumably no fun.  Later I will tape the join.

After a bunch of nervous hemming and hawing, I picked up the back of the boat with a chain hoist and set it on a defunct cabinet freezer.  From there, I painted a center line with the laser between the keel and rudder, drew around my monofilm template, and cut out the big letter T.  It sounds so effortless when I write it, but I must have double checked that laser line a million times before I threw the diamond blade in the jigsaw and carved the old girl up.  It took endless trimming and adjusting to get her home.  I think I climbed 5000ft, if you count my trips from lying on my back on the concrete to wrestling inside the hull.