There was a "free to a good home" notice in a recent Lysander Owners Association newsletter, offering two bilge keels for a Lysander. I got in touch straight away and am now in possession of said keels, plus a mast, rudder, and various bits of hardware. Many thanks to Shane and Mrs Norman for taking the trouble to offer these parts. The keels were a bit rusty, so I got them shot-blasted and galvanised locally (Bunner Galvanising, Liverpool were very helpful).

The bilge keels before galvanising- and our cat!

Meanwhile, there is also a small central keel on the Lysander of 2x1 mahogany, and this is extended round the stem by laminating thinner pieces together.

	The centre of the hull is planed flat, ready to fix the keel on.
	The keel was fixed using silicon bronze screws and epoxy, then filleted with epoxy/filler mix. The filleting strengthens the join and also makes a rounded profile which will be easier to cope with later when sheathing the hull with glassfibre/epoxy.
	I fixed the first piece of stem banding with epoxy and pins. It covered the gap between the ply sheets, which I filled with an epoxy/filler mix. This picture shows the forward end of the keel and the first piece of stem banding butted up to it.
	I did the other three pieces of stem banding all together. The first step before using epoxy is always to abrade the surfaces to be joined.
	The next step is to give the surfaces a coat of epoxy (no filler mixed in) to "wet out" the wood.
	A mix of epoxy and filler (but still fairly runny consistency) is then spread on the surfaces to take up any gap in the join.
	Making sure tools and screws are ready to hand the pieces were fixed.
	Keel and stem banding all fixed. It funny how just having these in place makes it look more like a proper boat all of a sudden!
	The skeg, shaped and fixed with a combination of zinc coachbolts from inside through the hog, large screws from outside, and epoxy. I made it rather deeper than the plans recommend.
	Skeg Revisited All the pictures above are from work in 2004, it is now 2005 and over the winter I have been having second thoughts about my departure from the plans in the matter of the skeg. Who am I to fiddle with a tried and trusted design? Just reading one or two articles about boat design isn't exactly extensive research - in the words of the poet : A little learning is a dang'rous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring So before starting to fill gaps and sand, etc. I decided to moderate my augmentation of the skeg and shaved a couple of inches off, giving it a pleasing (I think) curve in the process. It is still a little deeper than on the plans.
	My final piece of work on the skeg was to round off the aft end of it.
	Returning to the steel keels - plywood pads need be made to sit between them and the hull. The keels are curved at their base, but the curvature is not quite the same as that of the hull, so the plywood pads would require careful shaping to marry the shape of the keels to the shape of the hull. After puzzling over this for a while I decided to bolt the pads tightly to the keels, so forcing them to assume the same curvature, and then plane the other side to make a good fit onto the hull. This involved repeatedly lifting them onto the hull to try them for fit, and then taking them off to plane them some more, but the result is quite good. The bolt heads were recessed into the wood so that I could use the plane without hitting them.
	I was not ready to permanently fix the keels, they were not yet shotblasted and coated; but they needed to be in place whilst the keel pads were fixed to ensure a good fit. The method I used was to push bolts up through the hull from the inside and hold them in place with tape, the pads could then have epoxy applied, be placed on the hull, the keels lowered on, and the whole lot bolted in place. Then, when the expoxy between the pads and hull was set, the bolts were removed and the keels lifted off. The bolts needed coating with wax to ensure that the epoxy would not adhere to them and render them immovable. I just used a wax candle for this and it worked fine.
	Another complication in all this was that there was a gap between the plywood of the hull and the bottom strengtheners. Earlier in the construction, when I was fitting the plywood skin, I found that I could not fix the skin to the bottom strengtheners all the way along their length without unduly forcing them, so I left a gap, intending to pad it out with wood inserts later on. Now that I was going to use the strengtheners to temporarily bolt on the keels I had to hastily improvise some spacers. You can see this in the shot. The gaffer tape is across the bolt heads to hold them in place.
	This is now at a much later stage of the boat's construction. The hull has been finished and turned over and the decking completed, so now I am ready to fix the steel keels on. First I filled in the gap between the bottom strengtheners and the skin, using strips of plywood and also a mixture of epoxy and wood chippings saved from the electric planer.
	In this picture I have fixed extra strips of wood where the keels will bolt through and am planing them flush to the bottom strengtheners.
	This picture shows the bottom area all ready for the keels to be fixed under.
	I had the keels shotblasted and hot-dip galvanised at Bunner Galvanising. Here I am drilling some extra holes so that later on I can bolt on lead ballast weights.
	The picture inside once the keels have been fixed and the strengthener added.
	Keels all finished!