Day 76

The idea of little tripods holding up such a large and heavy hull doesn't seem too appealing as they would be floating around on the concrete, and don't seem to be very sturdy in our opinion! Lots of people use them, but we like lots of assurance that 11,000 lbs isn't going to fall on our heads. After a bit of planning, we realized we could make 3 very strong sets of stands, with scrap we have already laying around in our ever growing pile. ( Some donated by our friend Pat, who hauls scrap aluminum and steel, bless him! ) The idea is more of a cradle that will run right under the keel. It will have 5 or 6 inches of threaded rod welded on to a plate, padded with rubber mat to the hull, and a large nut that sits on top of thick washers welded on to top of pipe. Inside the pipe is a 1" pipe flange that fit perfectly in the ID of the pipe! This is to stabilize the rod.
After the basic frames were tacked together, we pulled them up onto the keel for test fitting and marked where the pads would sit. This will speed things up once the hull is hanging from the crane. The pads were also welded into place at the proper angle on the rod. ( See pic below ) It all worked out quite well!
Once the stands were safely back on the ground, another short piece of 2x4 tubing was placed end-on for fore-aft stability. Ready to go! The last thing to do in preparation for the turn-over was to paint the keel bottom. We did this with Ceram-Kote•tm• in the only color immediately available here, grey. Oh well it's only the bottom inch or so! Sure is nice stuff! Tough too. The only pre-treatment is a good sandblast, although this proved to be a problem as our sandblaster is the $49 variety, good for 10 or 20 sq. inches but not for 2000! It took a long time!

Day 76&77:
15 hours - Made stands, and coated bottom of keel. Ready to turn at last!!