Happy Father's Day!
I took advantage of this being my first father's day, and the arrival of my mother-in-law (who wanted nothing more than to sit with her grandson) to disappear into the basement for a few hours to work on the boat. There were a number of little errands to do before starting the planking, namely beginning to pull the insulation from the ceiling (we had some guests who had made a home in it), and cleaning up the dust and debrit. I aslo needed to clean the glue off the stems and smooth them out, and bevel them so the planks would lie flat against them. Naturally, that all required a trip to the hardware store - doesn't everything? Now I have my first good respirator to keep some of the toxic dust out of my lungs. It's amazing how it's comfortable to wear - and doesn't fog up my glasses like the cheap ones do.

I also had to fasten the molds to the board (in the earlier photo they were just standing there). And I put blue masking tape on the edges so that I don't glue the planks to the molds. Truth is, that i tacked the first mold in place before I remembered about the tape. Fortunately, the first plank isn't glued in so i was safe. In this shot you can see the first plank on either side. I was a little surprised there's a bit of a concave curve - but I double checked everything, and I think it's just the nature of this canoe - it's above the water line and in the stern so I'm not worried. The bow doesn't have it - it would be a bigger deal there. Other than that, the molds appear very fair (smooth curve from one to the next. I did however, see that there will be some interesting twist to the planks near the bottom...we shall see.

I like this shot because you can see how small the boat will be - that's a bottle of wood glue sitting in the middle there.