First off, I apologize for the delay in providing another update. The Florida trip got me off my usual routine. And now, on to the update…
The last of the stringers – the topmost in the bow – is tough. It bends a lot in two different directions, both vertically and horizontally. I tried bending a pair of 3/8″ strips in there and they broke. Too much “hard way” bending. So we had to do something else. After mulling a couple of options, what we came up with was to stack six 3/8″x 3/4″ strips vertically rather than two 1-1/2″ x 3/4″ strips horizontally. From a bending perspective, this worked great. From an assembly perspective – total nightmare.
Anyway, we first milled a bunch of strips:
And then we laminated the starboard stringer. Realistically this is where we made our first “ugly” error in the boat. The strips slipped on us during clamping and we couldn’t get the parts lined back up, so we decided to live with it. The ugliness will be completely buried later and invisible, but it’s annoying. Here’s a photo of it under clamp. In the right hand edge of the picture, you can see that it looks more or less like a composite, rectangular board. Toward the left side, it’s slipped so it’s more of a stair-step.
On the upside, we learned some lessons on this first one, and by the time we got to the port side we did a much better job. Next up, we have to install the last of the longitudinal members – the forward sheer clamps – and then fair all of the framing.
Exciting stuff!
-Ben