587Hrs – Dry Fitting Keelstrips

I probably should have stayed home and rested up today, I seem to have picked up a cold during my trip to France last week. I have a sore tickly throat, haven’t been sleeping well and feel achy all over. Hope it doesn’t turn into full blown man flu cus that’s really bad! Anyway I soldiered on and have got the three main sections of keel strip dry fitted. By that I mean that I marked their positions, pilot drilled the screw holes, screwed them into position, and then planed/sanded them to match the keel width, I will remove them again before re-fitting on marine bedding compound which will keep the water at bay (does that answer your question Matti?). The strips are screwed in place with 1" 10 gauge bronze slot head screws well countersunk into the UHMW. (That’s your answer Jacques).  I took things carefully and slowly, for example I used a large manual screwdriver that fitted the slot of the bronze screws perfectly rather than my drill/driver with a sloppy bit. To be honest my planing and sanding left the strips looking a bit rougher than I had intended but ultimately that doesn’t matter as long as they fit well and are strongly fixed. I think I have achieved that. Once bedded down on the compound they will do fine.