New Toys

I reached the point in the project where I need to learn a new skill. Several pieces that will be located inside the boat-- seats, bulkheads, transoms and daggerboard trunk -- are to be coated with epoxy. But first, some edges on some of the parts are to be rounded off to give a neat appearance. This can be done with a sanding block, according to the plans. But a more elegant and less laborious method is to use a router with a "roundover" bit. This is where we run up against my paucity of woodworking knowledge. I have vague ideas of what a router does, and the roundover bit seems pretty intuitive. (Clever, even: it shapes a round edge of a certain radius on the edge of a piece of lumber. The ones I bought even have a bearing to help guide and keep the edge straight.) So I got to break out the router I bought a week or two ago. But assembling it and understanding the details on how to handle it are going to take me a while. Fortunately, I work with a guy who is a skilled woodworker. Hopefully I can bend his ear tomorrow.

As for the bottom panel scarf and the stern transom, I was pretty happy with how they turned out. The only snag was a couple of drips of epoxy that squeezed out of the transom which I didn't see. They will take some extra work to clean up and sand off before that piece is ready to go.