I finished getting the shoe ready to be mounted the other day by making a form fit on the keel for it to fit into. The original setting of the shoe had a large gap of about an inch at the aft end that was filled with a bedding compound. I want the shoe to be set completely on epoxy with little if any play. My plan is to put the shoe in a ziplock bag then goop a large amount of epoxy onto the bag where the shoe and keel meet. Then with a jack set the shoe in place. I put the rudder back on temporarily to get the fit correct.
Once the epoxy began to kick I carefully cut the bag with a razor blade leaving a small lip to hold onto to peel the bag off once completely cured.
The shoe was easily removed. I released the jack and it came right off.
The plastic bag peeled off easy as well once the epoxy cured.
You can see in the last two pictures that there were a few small places where the bag wrinkled. I just sanded these area a little then coated with a thin film of thickened epoxy to fair them. THe end result was a solid epoxy mold for the shoe to fit on like a puzzle piece.
Hole placement and drilling.
This was annoying because whoever drilled the holes in the shoe originally did so in haste. The next two pictures show that all four holes were drilled at slightly different angles. Since I wanted to match the holes I did some measuring, and went at it with a drill. I only missed once and made a corrective drill which you can see in the next post when I mounted the shoe.
The final hole placement after only one slight mis-drill.
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