10th August

Nice weather day so back to painting house and garden work. Did manage some Nuts work later in the day.

Spent some hours grinding the leading and trailing edge of the keel plate then set it up on my jig and welded the fin to the mounting plate.  I had prebent the mounting plate yesterday and marked and drilled for the bolts and prefitted.

Happy with the fit.  It is all nice and straight and vertical and the bolts still slide in nicely.  There is some distortion on the keel mounting plate from weld shrinkage but that  was expected.

Only one root weld bead done so far.  I ground the 12mm plate at 45 degrees  each side to get complete penetration.  I guess another 2  passes each side to get the specified thickness.  This is a photo of a nice weld - you dont want to see some of the others I did.  Just as well I have a grinder to get rid of bad welds.  Was a good welder 30 years ago but lacking practice.😐