More fairing!
Ok, so I still haven't been very good at keeping up with the blog. It just takes too much time from boat building! After nearly 4 months I've finally finished fairing the frame to get ready for plywood planking. Since it's been so long I'll probably end up skipping over a lot of small detail work that I've done as I try to give an update on my current progress.


While fairing I made sure to take my time and look down the boards frequently to make sure I was getting the lines and angles desirable for planking. I mostly used my block plan to fair everything down and used a scrap piece of 1/4 ply to check the bevel alignment between the sheer and chine.



There were hiccups along the way that I needed to correct. For instance, the boards seemed to be not quite thick enough even though I followed the plans to a T. In the picture below the battens sat a little low in the cutouts I had made in the transom and even the frames. So I used a small band saw and made some small spacers that I epoxied into place under the battens to make them flush.

Before



After

Fixing the chines

It seems my chine boards were not quite wide enough and also the one shown in the picture was quite bowed. So I used my handy band saw again to make some thin pieces of mahogany to laminate onto the chines. I had to add some thin strips onto the front of the boat as well. Had the chine been 1/4 inch wider none of that would have been necessary.



This is after the chine lamination and faired. Much better!


You can see here the upper portion of the chine where I needed to laminate a small piece of wood to allow for proper fairing bevel 


For the bottom of the boat I made a longboard sander out of 1/4 inch ply and some handles from a dowel I had laying around. I used 80 grit paper and it worked quite well to flatten out the battens, keel, and chines.


Because my longboard sander was causing so much dust build up I found myself constantly using my air compressor to blow away all the dust as I was working. So I decided to build a cart for it with a reel to quickly get the hose out of the way when I'm done using it.


This next shot helps to show how much the sheer was faired down. The thin line going down it is where the two boards were laminated together making the sheer.




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