Re: pics of my boat project
Whew, buncha questions here.
First, you don't ideally want the stringer to touch the fiberglass in the bottom of your boat. If the wood touches everywhere evenly (impossible to do) it'd be fine, but most likely you'll end up touching in places and not in others. That creates places where the hull can flex more around spots where it can't flex at all, which are called hard spots and cause cracking and hull failure.
So, use either PL or peanut butter to bed the stringers, to make sure the force is transferred evenly from hull to stringers. Some people use instead a thin strip of pink foam to hold the stringer away from the hull while they glass it in... the glass transfers the load hull->stringer very evenly.
You can use sawdust with resin to make peanut butter. Just make sure it's dry, clean sawdust with no oil in it. You can also buy a can of filler like wood flour to make it, or use dust from grinding fiberglass if it's clean (white).
The groove is indeed the keel. You can either fit the stringer in it or fill with peanut butter (not PL) and set the stringer on it, your choice. The keel doesn't flex, and filling it would make it very strong, but fairly heavy, and use a lot of resin. Up to you.
Erik
