I've been working on a number of different things on my Corbie 5 IOM this past week. This post is on how I aligned and fixed the fin and bulb to each other. First I used my IOM Alignment and Measuring jig. It worked well! See earlier posts for more info. I spent a lot of time lining everything up as best I could. The Corbie 5 manual says to have the front of the fin at 493mm from the stern, the fin raked so that the base is 6mm aft of the top, and for the center of balance of the bulb to be 10mm aft of the leading edge of the base of the fin. I then worked on the bulb. It weighed well over 2500g when it arrived, and I had to remove a lot of weight. First I had to hog out the channel so that the fin would fit. I used my drill press to hog out much of it, and then my Dremel tool to remove the rest. I also drilled out the mounting holes. This bulb came with a large brass insert that had a 1/2" base and a 5/16" sleeve. I had to use two different bits to get th...

This week has been busy with life, but I've also been able to get a bit of boat time in. I've installed the ballast and started the fairing process. First, I cut the boat free from the building board, and then did a number of float tests with the lead simply pinned in place. Ended up using a bolt cutter to trim off some lead from the aft ends of the ballasts. Then I installed the lead onto the keel with thickened epoxy. When that dried, I then drilled several 9/64" holes all the way through the two halves. The holes were filled with short pieces of 1/8" stainless steel rod, and then thickened epoxy was piped in with a syringe. The lead is now epoxied and pinned permanently. Then the fairing started. I'm using a variety of thickeners. For strong adhesion, I used phenolic powder to stick the lead to the keel. I've had good luck with it in the past. It's the reddish stuff you can see. But then I'm experimenting with silica. It's the whitish...