Day 54

The morning country silence was broken only by the singing of birds, breeze in the leaves, and us grinding and hammering a 300 lb piece of steel!
A close up view of the edge of plate at keel front, .."clamp cup"		As can be seen in the photo at left, The only way we could secure clamps was to make a "cup" for the screw end to sit in. Or else they would just slide off. On the other side, we tacked on a piece of 1/4" rod that would hold the foot side of the clamps. After the piece was clamped into place, we could be assured of a fairly accurate mark to trim off the top. This was all done while the plate was still tacked on the bottom to save time.
I must admit that the position I was in, flopped over the keel, wasn't my favorite.....for plasma cutting... guys get your minds out of the gutter! The frames had to be ground in by small amounts to continue fairness, especially near where the first frame meets the split-pipe at the front. This isn't an exact dimension in the plans so modifications had to be made. 3/16" was the deepest.

		After the day was through, the front of the keel was whole. The welding will have to wait until next weekend, Thanksgiving, here in Canada. Georgena did get some crucail ones in, to stop a repeat of last weeks plate separation. The two halves of the keel plate snapped apart as a result of a sudden onslaught of very cold weather. ( See below )
Cold for the start of October anyway! The plate must have contracted quite a bit for that to happen as there was 7 or 8 tacks and all of them broke. It was a rude awakening and made us think of the winter to come, without working on our boat. Unfortunately, we are not as far along as we had hoped we would be. The boat is still upside down!

Day 54:
Clamped in and tacked on forward port side keel plate. Continued welding to the frames.