Daggerboard trunk

Today I started working on the daggerboard trunk.  In the end I succeeded in making a dry run assembly of the trunk.

Next step with the trunk is gluing the parts together as to get two half trunks followed by  coating the inside several times with unthickened epoxy to seal the wood.  After final assembly you cannot get there anymore.

Also I cut notches in the thwart beams to test fit the placement on the keel. Not that bad for an amateur. Following step will be marking where the slot will be cut in the keel. 

That is an arkward very irreversible process so I will not do that today. 

I also started pre fabbing the daggerboard itself using solid western red cedar. 

The bottom was roughly cut into an elliptical shape. On top I rounded it of and cut the hole to put your hand in to lift the daggerboard.

Empirical I found out that the cedar is apparently to "brittle" for that purpose as the hand grip just broke of. 

My present idea for a corrective action is to steam and laminate 2 or three thin strips of mahagony around the handle and glue in the broken peaces.  Maybe it even looks noce to have a mahogany topside!

Tomorrow is an other day.