First Sanding complete

Last week I finished sanding the canoe for the first time, now have to use resin to patch some gaps and holes and cracks, then a second and/or final sanding.  Here are some new pictures, the first ones are just after sanding and the others are after the canoe was dusted off and then wiped with a damp rag to bring the grain to the surface prior to another sanding.

The Hull is filled in and Staples have been removed

Well it has been a bit of a struggle getting the strips to round the stem forms.  I was forced to use a old style coping saw to get under the strips and cut off a part of the stem form to get the strips to sit better,  It worked better, but I was left with a small indentation towards the stern, but a little fill, sanding, and if needed a little cheating with some extra fiberglass cloth will deal with that. The staples are removed and now I have to scrap off some excess glue before I begin sanding.  Pictures below give some indication of the canoe shape in its rough form.

Trying to Round over the Stem Forms

Well It has been a few hours here and a few hours there and recently my great friend Daryl Pinksen visited and gave me a hand to lay up strips on the canoe.  We both discussed with amazement at how much that we were able to bend and shape the strips against the forms.  We did a great job working towards the top of the forms, but I did not shape the top of the stem forms narrow enough for the strips to lay flat enough and as we went I gradually took more and more of these forms off to get the strips to sit well.  That was going well, but when we got to the top I was not pleased with how one strip was sitting and the damage we did to the strip we layed below it.  In my frustration I removed the strip we  just tried to put in place and then thought I could remove the stripe we had placed below it...bad idea, I made a minor cosmetic issue into a bigger cosmetic issue.  We cut our loses and cut the strip and did a flat end to end join as best we could after we tried to clean out the cove to get it to sit in.  I was disappointed at this point because we had did such a great job up to that point, but the fix up was ok.  Have to remember that at the beginning of this project that the goal was to learn about woodworking and canoe building on this project and that mistake was a great learning opportunity,  Once I get some epoxy on it later and some filler in place no one will notice the mistake except me.

Here are some pictures

Above and below is Daryl, getting us ready to glue on another strip.

 It is easy to see now in hindsight that the top of the stem is not bevelled enough before it was rounded over

 You can see how the top strip on the right side above is not laying as it should and that it should be laying flatter.  Recently I have pulled staples and screws in that area to try and get under the strips and take more off the stem form to correct this.

 Below you can see where I tried to flat join two strips after not being able to remove it to replace it with another strip, just made a minor problem into a bigger problem, but this is not a deal breaker.

 Above you can see better how the strips are not sitting flat enough and have created an uneven space between the strips.  I am presently trying to get under the strips and chisel out some of the stem to get these strips to sit flatter to reduce this imperfection.  Learned a valuable lesson here that the stem forms at the top need to be angled in before rounding over to allow a better uniformed fit.  You can see this imperfection below as well.

Above you will notice that once the stem form issue is worked out that things should be ok and hopefully it will be unnoticeable.

Still Laying up Strips

After about a week or so of finding an hour or two here and there I am getting close to reaching the transition point of laying strips vertically to horizontally, I will let you know how goes later.  But here are a few pics of what has been done so far.

Cutting strips and routering beads and coves

Opps forgot to mention buying some white pine and then ripping it into 1/4 inch strips.  Then these were routered to have beads and coves on each strip.

 

Templates Completed

Well my thoughts about the oscillating speed of the jigsaw was correct.  I reset the oscillation to 1 and the speed to 1, only to slowly increase the speed to 3 and this allowed me to more accurately.  I cut slightly outside the line to ensure that I could later fair everything up with the rasp.  Here are some of the forms after being cut out.

Once cut I clamped the matching pairs together and then fared them up with the rasp, only later to clamp them all together a paired set at a time to ensure that they were all flush.

Once these were done to what I thought was as accurately as i could make them I double checked them to the original template printout and they were good.  So on to setting them up on the strongback.  I did this and did not have the camera with me, so what you see below is after I had them mounted and centered with a line from the 1st and 11th template I installed the others.  Then came the forming of the stems with the rasp, which took some elbow grease and liquid refreshments.  Then they too were installed on the strongback, and when they were I then leveled all the templates and ran a temporary wooden strip along the top.  What you see below is the forms taped and the first strip to get a idea of the sheer line of the canoe.

Then I started to add the first sheer strip that was screwed to the templates, with the new strips added being glued together and stapled to the templates.