Thursday, March 26, 2015

Gunnels and stem decks



Well, I ripped the gunnels 1 by 3/4  and made a miter box to cut a 7 inch long splice cut.  Then I spliced them together, I did this after making a full set of Gunnels but I did not like how they were cut and spliced so i redid them.  The others turned out better, but I had some issues with knots in the juniper (larch), which I hope the epoxy glue will take care of.

Working by myself I came up i\with an idea of how to hold the inside gunnel with hand clamps and then slowly hold up the outside gunnel and using clamps I slowly clamped them in place, removing hand clamps as i went along.  Using the pre-drilled holes in the inner stems I screwed the two gunnels together, making first an extra pilot hole through the hull and outer gunnel from the pre-drilled holes that I just mentioned in the inner gunnel.  This was continued until I reached the stem, slowly moving clamps after an area was screwed on and re positioning them further along the canoe towards the gunnel.





















Here are the stems, I had an 18 inch piece of juniper and I cross cut it diagonally, them flipped it and using a simple holding jig on the table I managed to resin glue a 1 1/2 inch piece of maple between it.  I then trimmed the maple to a point and trimmed off the bottom end.   Then the gunnels were marked on the stem form and were cut out using a hand saw,   Eventually they were glued and screwed in place.  Recently I began the sanding to clean them up.  At the very bottom you can see a photo of the frames I have started for the seats, so far I only have the tendons cut, next the mortise.










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