Boat construction is considered by many to be the ultimate test of carpentry skills. Also a test of patience as many hours of work sometimes spanning years are required to construct a seaworthy craft.
Boat construction is considered by many to be the ultimate test of carpentry skills. Also a test of patience as many hours of work sometimes spanning years are required to construct a seaworthy craft.
Continuing, this is the 9th day since attaching that first sheer strip. Now 3 batches of strips into it and it's starting to look like a boat.
Turned out that filling in the bow and stern and then transitioning from the stem pieces to the keel strips was the most challenging. Used my own technique for what Nick calls "cheater" strips. These are strips that fill in between other strips. Typically having a long taper and requiring either a hand cut cove or bead. In this case, they all needed a cove on the edge that was scribed into place. Instead of using a round file like Nick suggests, I went ahead and cut the cove on the router table using a scrap piece as a backer. Worked out great.
The main reason for this filling in was my decision to use a light colored strip for the waterline. Was using all dark strips from the sheerline so far. Wanted to have a fairly uniform color going for the hull but then I realized that I was going to have a lot more light colored strips than dark. At the same time, I noticed that the last strip I'd put on was right at the midships waterline. Had a brilliant idea to mark the waterline with a light strip to highlight that feature of the boat. So that's what I did but it left an area on the bow that then required these "cheater strips". Here's a shot of me working with one of the last cheaters and then a better look at the bow and waterline strip.
Like I said, it's been 9 days since laying on the sheer strips. Didn't work on it every day of course but most days I was able to put in at least 3 or 4 hours. A couple of days would find me at a point where the glue really needed to dry before trying to fit the next strip. As you can see in the photos below, there aren't too many more strips needed to finish the hull. Probably tomorrow, without distractions, will see the final strip being placed in the hull.