Waiting for Epoxy

With any luck, when we pull the 2x6 boards off, our 8-foot sheets of plywood will have been transformed into beautiful and seamless 18-foot sheets of plywood! The point of scarfing was to taper the ends just right, and now they're epoxied together, but they take a couple of days to dry. So Thursday or Friday we can check to see that we did it right. Oh boy.

Starting off Strong. Right?

First my back went out from too much leaning over plywood with a heavy power planer. So that was a week. Then I was in Tacoma, taking care of some school business. Dad's hand still wasn't up to much work during that time. Then we decided that the planer was a piece of junk (explaining why we'd had to spend hours leaning over the damn plywood to see any progress), and ordered a new planer. But after all those trials, the scarfing is done -- at least, the planing part of it. Voila, the pieces all scarfed and ready to be glued next week.

To explain a little more, we are making a 17' boat, and plywood only comes in 8' long sheets. So, you need to taper the ends of two sheets, lay them end-to-end, then glue them together to make a longer piece. That was the point of, oh, the last month. The next stage was 'lofting.' Well, that's what I call it, even though it isn't TRUE lofting. Basically, we drew bulkheads on large pieces of plywood very carefully and cut them out. That second part is known as 'cutting.' At least I think it is.

And finally, you can see the bulkheads leaning up against the wall. The bulkheads are those pieces that go side-to-side. They will help form the hull to the right shape, and will also support the floor boards. So I hope we got the measurements right!