You probably won’t believe this, but it took me about 10 iterations and around 5 hours to come up with this simple looking set up that would allow me to router the centerboard slots in the hog and keel for my boat. The problem I have been running into on this project is that my facilities are a bit lacking. Every time I have to attack a new facet of the build I have to come up with a suitable, make-shift contraption that will help me to get the job done right. Cutting the slots in these long, expensive, beautiful Sapele boards had to be done perfectly or the performance of the boat could be compromised. Think about it. If the centerboard is off the centerline of the hull, or on an angle, the boat will probably not sail in a straight line.
The issues I had getting this set up properly are too numerous to describe here, but let’s just say that the frustration level was high. Getting this step done correctly was a huge relief!
Here is the hog with the centerboard slot successfully routered in. I used a plunge router for this. You can see it sitting on the board.
Here is the keel with the centerboard slot. Believe it or not, I had to create a new fence (the vertical piece you see to the left of the board) and a new spacer (the narrow flat piece to the right of the fence) to get this piece done. This is because the keel is 1/4″ thinner and 3/16″ narrower than the hog. These micro-adjustments were very time consuming but had to be precise.
Lesson learned here for using a plunge router. Always start with a board that is much wider than your finished width. The boards I worked on today were already at finished width. If they had been say, an extra 5 inches wider I could have routered in the slot to an approximate distance, then cut the edges of the board down to have the slot end up in the center. This would have taken about an hour or so instead of the 7 hours my approach took!