Did a whole batch of scarfs joints on the material for the chine and sheer. I like to use the nautical terms – in part it is like starboard and port. These specialized terms are anchored at the stern facing the bow. The starboard side of the boat is always the same even if I am standing in the bow facing the stern and taking orders from the helmsman. We don’t get into the comedy act of “my right,” and “you stupid, THE OTHER LEFT!”

Right now we are assembling the boat upside down so the chine is on the top and the sheer is on the bottom. But, a lot of times we have to think about the boat properly oriented in the world as a boat and so I’ve just taken to calling those two longitudinals by their special names, and the keelson too. Rather, than saying, “the top longitudinal, that will become the bottom.” In any case, these need to be really long so that we can enjoy the natural flexibility of wood to get them into the curves we need. We connected 3-1x4x10ft pieces. Scarf joints are just two tapered surfaces on the boards that are mated and glued.

We had to wait for the glue to cure so we switched to working on the keelson. It is analogous to our spines, the frames to ribs, and so it needs to be straight and centered. An additional wrinkle is that this boat has “rocker” that is a second curve between the bow and stern. In the previous post, you could see it as we position the frames. It makes for a more nimble and quick pivoting boat.

We were a little perplexed at how to proceed after anchoring the keelson to the motor well. The keelson gently curves up to mid-ship. The curve to the bow increases steeply. We tried weighting the keelson, and left it flexed overnight before screwing it to the forward frames. Unfortunately, the scarf failed partially. POP! So we re-glued and screwed it together and came back the next day. We used the strap clamp to persuade it to fit and quickly screwed it down hoping to support the scarf rather than stressing it.

The first chine is being dry fit here too. Notice as well that we removed station 9 from the sequence of frames. We just couldn’t see the keelson bending around it and joining the stem in a fair curve.

The boat is taking shape and it is motivating to see how quickly. However, there are many questions about how to get all those sticks to come together at the bow. So, we left it alone to gestate a bit.