Hi all--
So, the weather has warmed up, the work has slowed down, and the river ice
isn't moving yet. It's a perfect time to work on the boat.
Over the winter, son Ben and I added onto his shop, which has been a
tremendous success. We have a warm, well lit, clean, comfortable place
dedicated to wood working. It's not really big enough for boat building,
but as a woodworking shop it's great.
When the spring weather came along, we evicted the vehicles from the rest
of the shop and started on the boat. Here are some pics of the project,
<https://pdknz.livejournal.com/photo/album/4390> still in the stage of
cutting out parts to glue together. This week so far, I've gotten the
transom pretty much finished, plus most of the framing, and started gluing
up the long plywood panels for the bottom.
Observations so far--
The specialty wood for the project is a thrill to use. I ordered four
sticks of 2 x 12" - 20' rough cut CVG (clear vertical grain) Douglas fir
for the framing. Nothing like that exists around here, and I've become
used to using locally harvested logs and lumber. It's a lot different.
Easy to cut and work. It is nice to my edge tools, well dried, and
uniform, just to start with. Even the taste of the sawdust isn't bad. Out
of the four boards, one had some minor grain issues and a lengthwise split,
so I had to re-cut one piece, but overall, it's a whole new WW experience
for me.
A couple of the pics show my first efforts at scarfing the plywood, which
turns out to be working fine. The method is to mark the length of the cut
(7 times the thickness), lay out the plywood carefully, and then plane it
to the right angle. Works great. You may notice some yellow plastic tools
in a few of the pics, BTW. Just disregard that detail-- My new Stanley
#112 circular plane is featured in one pic--it's nice for detailing some of
the curves, following the draw knife and spoke shaves. I'm glad to finally
dig out, fettle and use those old tools. It has been a long time.
PK
On schedule with a bucket list project
in Galena, Alaska
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