Here we go again.

This weekend Katy and Bobby were away in NYC so I snuck into the basement and began work on another boat. This one is a wee lassie, http://www.feathercanoes.com/ a featherweight canoe, that I hope will be a good tender to the caledonia yawl www.roger.coulter.net.

I began by reading the book several times. Then I began with a building board (or strongback) made from theleftover lumber from tent frame over the caledonia yawl project. I bought a 1/2" sheet of particle board and ripped it into three 16" strips, then Erin and I drew lines vertically down the strips at every inch to transfer the patterns. We cut the patterns out, then spent half a day making sure they were as close to symetrical as possible. I cut up an old coat rack to get the cleats that hold the molds up. We discovered a few errors and omissions in the book. First, the plans say how far appart to space the molds, but the sum of all the distances didn't equal the total length, so after some theorizing we decided that the missing length was exactly equal to what was needed to make one odd-ball spacing equal to the spacings on either side. So the space between station 1 and 2 was 20", the spacing between 2 and 3 was 17 3/4 and the spacing between 3 and 4 was 20". Overall we were 2 1/4 short, so by adding it to the 17 3/4" station we got 20 inches - just like the ones on either side. The other funny little omission is that he doesn't actually say how thick the stem is supposed to be, but I was able to figure out it should be 1/2" because there's a 1/2" gap between the stem mold and the first station.

So enough with the tribulations. I went to my favorite lumber yard, Crosscut Hardwoods to pick up some cedar for the planking and they didn't have any - the manager said something about hardwoods and I realized Cedar is a softwood - not surprising they don't have it! He recommended another place and I'll head out this week to pick it up. In the mean time, I went to Dunn Lumber and picked out some spruce for the stems. I asked if he had any clear spruce (without knots) and he laughed and said Spruce is known for having a lot of knots. I deserved that. Anyway, I picked out a good board with flat grain (so that when I ripped it vertically I'd get vertical grain) and all the knots were on one side so I knew I could get a lot of clean strips.

We changed the blade on my table saw to a thin blade so I wouldn't waste much wood and started cutting paper think strips 1/16 of an inch thick and about 8 feet long. It's an interesting challenge. If you get just a little off, you can taper the strip off altogether. The other interesting challenge is that the tablesaw just scares the living snot out of me. So easy to lose a finger or have the wood kick back and knock you in the ribs. But I suppose a healthy bit of fear is a good thing - it's when you get careless that things go wrong.

We got cut up about 12 strips - which was more than enough and then cut them down to 32" lenghts and glued them together around the stem molds with ordinary wood glue - which is so much more pleasant to work with than epoxy! It washes off with water for one, and doesn't smell bad either. The whole boat will be encased in epoxy and fiberglass later so these joints don't need to be water-tight.