Turn of the bilge - done. The story of a bitter victory.

Bending plywood proved to be a challenge. Maybe it's just the plywood/stringer material I'm using, but the results are not quite as good as I was going for. To cut to the chase: plywood does not like to be bent and is trying to go straight again exerting quite some forces on the skeleton. So if that is not stiff enough the water lines turn out not as smooth and fair as intended. This specific design does not seem to have enough stiffness, at least the way I'm doing it:) (maybe that is the problem). In hindsight I wish I had made an additional station between frames D and E (first and second counting from the stem). Also maybe an additional stringer or two. The deviations from the hull form lines are not very large, but noticeable, I'm not worried, it's all still structurally sound and hydrodynamically it will also not matter - not at the speeds a 5m sailboat is capable of. It's also very unlikely anyone but me will ever notice:) So enough yammering, on with the pictures:

Installing the bow section went fine as it was already pre-bent as described earlier. Installing the section directly aft of it was tricky due to the curvature at the front side and the length of the panel. I started at the bow, fastening one corner with a temporary bolt. This made bending the panel into place easier:

I used bolts also to force the butt blocks into shape, went with 8mm plywood, the 10mm was impossible to bend in such small pieces. I will reinforce the joint with extra glass on both sides.

While the epoxy it still malleable I clean up the squeeze out and make fillets on the inside. 

Trimming is quite easy:

No plywood is perfect:

Below, the subtle flaws in the curvature along the water lines are visible. I may have minimised this by choosing to join panels closer to the frame, but the effect would still be there. Just in between the stations, where nothing rigid supports the stringers the plywood tries to flatten itself out. It both pulls the unsupported bottom chine to the outside and the middle stringer to the inside.

Other things I could have done: install the bottom plating first. Would have prevented the bottom chine from developing the complication. But would have made installing the bilge plating way tougher. I could have gone the way most setka builders go: make it all flatter, avoid the large compound curvatures, would have helped some. I could have installed a (half-) frame and additional stringers. Next time maybe:)

Checking the global geometry shows all is well in terms of symmetry, straigntness and trueness of the hull:

On to installing the bottom now.
tot ziens.