Waiting for the plywood

I used the time while I was waiting for the plywood to be shipped to finish most of the remaining parts.

I traced the patterns and and trimmed the 3/4” plywood parts to final shape:


Then I fabricated a 1.5” thick stem and breast hook by laminating two 3/4” pieces of plywood. For the stems, I carefully trimmed one piece to final shape on the band saw and used it as a template to make a duplicate with the router.

The plans called for lots of screws:
I honestly can’t imagine how all these screws make it any stronger, but I’m going to trust the the plans and follow them exactly since the designer was an experienced naval architect. 

I also bought a 3’ length of 8/4 Sapele for the centerboard uprights and planed it down to 1-1/8” per the plans. The piece was badly warped but YouTube taught me how to flatten it by hot gluing it to a flat piece of MDF with shims and running it through the planer:


I also ran all the frame members through the thickness planer because I found that the boards from the lumber yard were not all the same thickness (which I think is to be expected for S2S lumber). In retrospect, it would have been better to plane the boards before cutting the parts out to avoid snipe and tear out at the edges.  Well I know for the next one now. 

When the plywood comes, I can cut the seat gussets and - after five weeks of building - finally will have all of the frame parts cut so I can start on the “some assembly required” portion of the project. 

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