A lot has transpired since my last post. We headed down to Dayton for a wonderful weekend of birthday celebrations for Aunt Alice. 90 years young! Family, parties, baseball games and a lot of food made the weekend a great success. While I was there I picked up Uncle Burt’s woodworking tools. We loaded everything up in a U-Haul trailer and headed home. I am now the steward and beneficiary of his collection of tools. You can see them all in my garage here. I picked up a chop saw, band saw, jointer, router table and a Shop Smith ( a 4-in-1 tool that does everything from lathe to table saw).
Once set up I went to work testing the equipment to make sure I knew what I was doing, then started making test cuts on an 8′ two-by-four to simulate cutting my cedar strips. The cedar is very expensive and I can’t afford to make any mistakes with it, so my testing was extensive. It turned out that Uncle B’s Shop Smith was not up to the task of ripping (cutting the 2 x 4 lengthwise) so I headed down to my brother Jim’s to borrow his table saw. He lent me the saw along with a bunch of other goodies that will be very useful for this project. Thanks Jim!
I started by cutting the 2 x 4 into 3/4″ wide strips. I then turned the strips on their sides and cut those into 1/4″ strips. I now produced multiple 1/4″ x 3/4″ x 8′ strips that duplicate the strips I’ll need to produce out of the cedar planks I purchased for the boat hull. I’ll need to mill 105 of these strips in 16′ lengths, then router the edges with coves and beads so they will fit together seamlessy! Jim’s table saw was up to the task and made the job pretty easy. I also got familiar with my newly purchased Grr-Ripper blocks (the 2 yellow pieces on the right side of the table saw). These blocks will allow me to safely cut the strips with minimal risk of injury. They’re great.
The test cutting of the 2 x 4 will not be wasted. I set up a stop for the chop saw and cut the strips into 16″ lengths. These pieces will have many uses throughout this project.
As you can see, I’ve clamped the 16″ strips onto the frame of the hull. I have them mounted on the lines I drew onto the templates before constructing the frame. I can now visually look down the length of the hull to see if the templates are true and creating a fair line for the sheer (the top edge of the hull, which is on the bottom for construction). I have made some minor tweaks, and everything looks good for starting the laying of the strips. Now I just have to make them! I’ll let you know how that goes in my next post.