Mortises for the skeg
There are three mortises to be cut in the keelson. I chose to cut them in situ, although it is much easier to do it on the bench, before the keel is glued to the structure.
Pros of doing it after gluing is that one can precisely mark where mortises should be.
Or eyeball it.
I prefer this way also because the keel plank is heavily bent in this section. It felt more secure to have a timber without cuts while performing the bend.
The skeg should land into corresponding openings in the keelson.
Marking approximate place for each mortise. Happy to see that the only big knot left will be cut out.
I made a simple fixture to guide the router: thick plywood piece with slats stopping the router at the edges of planned cut.
After placing the fixture in approximate position I used a small straight edge to check if inclination of the cut - and its edges - will correspond to keelson’s openings. This is why I used thick plywood - to have walls to support the straight edge.
Eyeballing at its best.
The first cut went a bit off, by 3mm. I needed to enlarge it in one direction, to compensate for the miss. Such small mistake will be filled with epoxy goo so I don’t sweat about it.
I figured source of the mistake and the other two cuts were spot on.
All mortises cut and trimmed with rounded edges.
Next step is to bevel the keelson and then I can start planking!