filling in

I'm almost done with the strips! Today Tracy helped me bend the three final strips on one of the lower strips (without glue) so that I can fit the pre-made piece into the final gap tomorrow.

Centreline

This weekend I cut the centreline. Like a lot of the steps in building this boat, this was a step that I kind of dreaded but it turned out to be pretty easy. That said I'm pretty tired now. It gets hot in that garage, especially with two 150W lightbulbs shining on me for several hours. This step is needed to trim off the edges of all the strips hanging over the centre. It went like this:

Mark a line about an inch off the true centreline and chisel down to it. Then mark the true centreline using two methods: transfering the centreline on each station mold to the outside of the hull using a little measuring jig and stretching a string between two nails tacked on to the no. 6 stations. Once the line was drawn on in ink I got the chisel out again and shaved the strips down to about 1/8" from the line. Using the chisel is quite satisfying and quickly results in a big pile of cedar shavings on the floor. At this stage, the book suggests using a rabbet plane to bring it down to the line, but an online check of woodcraft.com showed that one would cost me about $90, so instead I used a series of sanding blocks, 60, 120 and 200 grit, which was free. Maybe a little more work this way but it sure resulted in a perfect vertical and straight cut.

Next is another step I've been dreading: fitting in the strips on the other side to "close the football".

Back from Brazil

We're back from our month in Brazil. It was a nice change of pace from working all day, if not exactly relaxing. We covered lots of ground and saw lots of stuff. Tracy put some captions on some of our pictures. They can be seen here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/smcclennan/Brazil

Now we've been back in Mountain View for two weeks and I've been trying to get ahead on the canoe. I have just about all of the strips on one side on now, except for maybe one or two. I've been able to do it by myself by bending the strips into place carefully and clamping them down with L-shaped clamps at 3 stations, allowing me to put the staples in at the other stations to secure each strip. I only had help on one when Scott (another one), who lives around the corner, came by to talk while I was in the middle of a strip. It was definitely easier with another set of hands. He is an interesting guy, with a lot of the same interests. I went over to his garage today to check out the little 16ft "pocket cruiser" sailboat he keeps in there. Maybe some day this fall he'll take me out for a sail!

Next step on the canoe is to trace the centre-line back on to the strips and cut along the line, as perfectly straight as possible.

Here are couple of the latest photos as well as an old one showing the L-shaped brackets held on with C-clamps.