I am close to getting the transom, hog and apron assembled, but I’ll need a few questions answered by the boat designer before I can proceed. I emailed him a couple of times this week but hadn’t heard back from him. I was getting nervous that he had tired of me and might leave me in the lurch, so I decided to call him. No answer! I left him a message, and thankfully, he texted me back that he had been on vacation and was surely not ignoring me. Phew! I should be hearing from him on Monday. Fortunately there is plenty to do until I hear back from him.
I set about creating the apron out of this 1″ x 3″ x 26″ piece of sapele. This piece needs to be shaped with rolling bevels down both sides to receive the cedar strips as they meet the bow.
I mounted the piece in my bench vise and used a block plane and shinto rasp to slowly create the bevels.
I have attached the hooks that I created earlier on the bandsaw to hold the first cedar strip. This strip will create the sheer, or top line of the hull, so it has to look fair and straight.
I decided to start milling the Sitka Spruce planks I picked up a couple of weeks ago. I have four planks. A sixteen footer, a fourteen footer and 2 twelve footers. Each plank is 1 1/4″ x 6″. All four sides of the planks are rough, so they’ll have to be smoothed down with the jointer and planer before I can start cutting them down to size. The first step is to get a smooth edge on one side edge with the jointer. This was rough work as the planks are long and heavy. Adding to the difficulty, the jointer is a little under-powered and barely up to the task. I was able to get it done, but the quality is minimally passable. It should suffice though.
Total time of project to date: 55 hours