Cuts Complete, Building Begun

After all the work it took to loft the patterns onto my plywood, actually cutting the pieces out was almost anticlimactic.  It took two modest chunks of my weekend and required no help, whereas the lofting took a long evening and another entire morning with help from my kids.

I had thought about using the Japanese pull saw for much of this process, but that didn't work out.  I have trouble controlling the direction of my cuts as closely as I'd like with that saw, and it's not exactly gentle on the top veneer of the plywood, either.  My trusty circular saw is easier to hold straight, and chips the veneer less to boot.  By adjusting the saw for a pretty shallow depth, I was able to cut the gentle curves of the side and bottom panels with it.  I used my brother's jigsaw on the really curvy parts, like the stem and stern posts.

The only problem with the circular saw is that it has a very wide kerf.  "Kerf" is the portion of your wood that is turned into sawdust by the action of the saw.  My circular saw is fitted with a nice carbide-tipped blade that's at least 1/4" thick at the cutting tips, so it chews a good 3/8" path through the plywood.  The jigsaw was closer to 1/8" kerf, and the pull saw is even thinner than that.  So any time two pieces were really close together on the plywood, I'd set the circular saw aside and pick up the pull saw for that portion.

In the end, I am pretty happy with the accuracy of my cuts.  I think they're all within working tolerances, and I didn't make any expensive errors that require another sheet of plywood to fix.  I'm afraid I don't have pictures at this time, but I'll try to post some soon.

The end of the cutting process leaves one with six ~8' panels - two for the bottom and two for each side; a bow and stern deck; a number of delicate arcs to reinforce the midships end of the decks; scrap for butt plates and lashing pads; and two each stem post and stern post.  These last are duplicated because they're laminated to double thickness; Sunday night, with a little spare time on my hands, I decided to go ahead and laminate them.

I mixed a single-pump batch of System 3 epoxy, spread it liberally on both mating surfaces, and joined them.  After wrapping the whole affair in plastic bags to keep from accidentally bonding tools to the work, I clamped each set of posts with 4 clamps, 2 of which were on chunks of scrap wood to distribute the load.  A day later, they look pretty good - solidly joined and lined up correctly with each other. 

Next up, I need to build a way to stow the long panels when they're joined.  I plan to hoist them overhead into the rafters on the porch; I'll try to diagram or photograph that system for a future posting.