Weekend #2

This weekend we finished all the scarfing and have the planks ready to be epoxied together - with much sawdust and plane-curls produced along the way. I hadn't been convinced that the scarfing process would work as easily as the instructions seemed to indicate, but it really is a slick system. We stacked four planks on top of each other, staggering them by 1.25" and then used a block plane to create an even bevel across all four pieces. The strata of the plywood provided a nice affirmation when we'd done it evenly, as planing at a consistent angle reveals regular patterns in the plywood levels (as shown in this picture of Rich's lovely scarf).


After finishing the (copious) scarfing, we realized that we'd make a slight mistake in that we'd made two of the scarf angles upside down by accident. We'd been figuring all along that it didn't matter which side ended up as up or down as we did this since we're just making the planks out of which to cut the actual pieces, but on these particular two planks it DID matter since we'd cut extra pieces out of each of the planks being joined together and they had to be scarfed together a certain way. I'm not sure how to explain it in words, but enough said that we realized that we needed to cut off the backward scarfs and rescarf in the opposite direction. Our first problem-solving experience of the adventure, and a fairly simple solution as a result!

Once we'd resolved that, the planks were ready to be epoxied at the scarfed edges. We thought we might try to squeeze in the epoxying job Sunday afternoon before I headed home on the train, but it turned out that we needed more epoxy before we could proceed, which meant more studying for me (a good thing). At this coming weekend's Maine BoatBuilders Show we'll get any other supplies we need and head back to the basement!