Seats

And now there's somewhere to sit. The seats are 6 by 1 ¼ inch wide slats of Sapele, given 4 good coats of garden furniture oil.

I'm putting cross braces underneath the slats half way between each pair of frames. This means the 6 slats move together. I makes them much stronger.

Is that sharp enough

I've got most of the slated seats done. I'd have them finished tonight only it's raining, so I'm here typing. And I've started on the coamings. Since I've only just enough wood, I am being kind of careful not to cut anything too short. Given the complex joins, with compound angles, I cut the first one 1/8" too long on purpose, intending to sneak up on it with a plane.

Damn, end grain in Sapele is as hard as a Hamiltonian Path. (really hard)

I think it was Lincoln who said "If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four hours sharpening the axe", well I sharpened my little low angle block plane till it could do this to the end grain.

Good man Lincoln, with sense like that, he should have been let run the county.

The obligatory birds mouth test

I'm still thinking of doing a hollow mast. I made up a quick jig on an 18v hand saw to cut the groove in a single batten, then I cut this into 8 pieces.

Even with this rough and ready attempt, it came out rather well. Go to Duckworks website and search for Birdsmouth. They have LOTS.

I penciled in the outline of the joints, othersiwe you could hardly see them.

Introducing the Lady Caroline

Now that the deck is glued into place, and trimmed, I can see what The Lady Caroline will look like.

I've just started the seats. I have some filling over the screws & sanding to do on the deck.

It's all coming together.

In other news, my Mom recycled an Old Leather Sofa. I acquired large amounts of the leather. And a short strip of it made a nice strop. Turns out that a scrap of leather with some polishing compound on a backing of birch ply will sharpen up a blade just fine. The more I practice sharpening tools, the more I wonder what all the fuss is about.

The deck is attached.

The entire deck is now glued and screwed in place. It started raining about 10 minutes after I'd finished the aft panel. That could have been a small disaster if the rain has arrived 30 minutes earlier.

I see a router and an edge trim bit in my near future to trim back the over hang on the deck.

I've started work on the seats. The slats look really nice with the deck oil on them. I just broke the corners with sand paper. The wood has a wavy grain, back and forth a few mm every few feet. Fine in terms of the strength of the slats, but running a block plane along the edge is a disaster. 18" of slicing through the grain followed by lifting a chunk.

To bend the slats into place, I've clamped a block to the outside of the seat supports, and reversed a few QuickClamps to make pushers out of them. An extra one vertically placed at each end keeps things from springing loose.

I've just sanded and oiled two slats so far to see how it goes, now I need a more efficient way of doing the remaining 12 for the seats, and 9 for the floor.