Cutting the gussets

The plywood came in from Canada so I took a half-day off work to pick it up from a warehouse near the Buffalo airport. It was a rare sunny day and SXM was playing a classic Grateful Dead concert so it was an enjoyable few hours of driving. I spent most of the time thinking through the rest of the construction process  

When I got there, I found that although I’ve previously fit many 4x8 sheets of plywood in the minivan, these didn’t fit. I’m not sure if the sheets were a tad larger than 4’x8’ (they were made in Europe) or if it was the cardboard packaging, or both.  In any case I couldn’t completely close the hatch so I stopped at Home Depot to get some twine to tie the hatch door closed.

Since I was at Home Depot with the minivan and had already taken the seats out, I bought a sheet of 3/4” melamine to use to layout the frames. I slipped in the mud while loading it and dropped it, which took a big chunk out of corner but I don’t think that will matter.

I stored 6 of the 7 sheets of plywood I ordered in the shed since I won’t need them for a while, and kept one sheet out to make the seat gussets and centerboard trunk sides:

I needed to make four of each gusset - a front and back for each side - so I rough cut four oversized blanks for each frame joint and stacked them so I could cut four copies of each part at once to ensure they are identical:

After trimming the gussets to shape, I finally had all the parts I need to assemble the frames. 


Next step will be a big milestone - building the actual frames. 

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