Prospector Sailing Canoe Build

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Butt Straps and Lasers

Been thinking about the butt-straps, I don’t want them to look like a horrible joint down the middle of the boat.
I thought about shaping them but cant waste too much time on a design that may be over-the-top for this craft.

Decided to stencil a design in wood stain instead, I am quite pleased with the result.
I intended to scribe a line to stop the stain running but when discussing this earlier Dave said that it may weaken the joint, so I dabbed off any excess stain before applying it to the strap to avoid it running too far, it worked pretty well,



I can now section the length of strap to the plank sizes and place a slight bevel on the edges for the chines,


note that I used a cheap laser to align the planks

the plans call for the straps to be fixed with glue and brass nails, by glue I presume they mean epoxy resin. I cant find brass nails small enough so I got some small copper nails and will cut them to 6.5 or 7mm I can use the stencil design to place the nails,

all in all not a very productive evening but I am satisfied with what I did

Received help from a mate yesterday, he also lent me some working lights so we can now work into the night.

Managed to complete all of the planks, when using a plane or spokeshave on the ply's end-grain the blades blunt quickly so a good stone to sharpen them is essential, my mate Dave demonstrated it is easier to plane down to the line with the board laid flat and the plane side on as you can see the line better but you need a lighter plane i.e. a block plane, a smoothing plane becomes too heavy for this job. We laid out both halves of the first two planks and the canoe starts to take shape.


 
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