Just as I finished the new Versalams showed up. The driver and I hauled them into the shed and I quickly unwrapped them and broke the bands. Grabbed the small one and sure enough; straight, flat and square. Took the rest of the wrapping off the big one and started pulling staples. The joker that wrapped these must get paid by the staple, I must have pulled a hundred of them. I very carefully went over it three times looking for more staples or stubs, don't want to hit them with the Skilsaw or the planer!
Put the long one up on the sawhorses and sure enough; it too was straight, flat and square. Good for Valley Lumber, hopefully they'll get it sorted with their vendor. Set that sucker on the floor and went to work on the small Versalam.
I was going to saw it to width, but changed my mind and grabbed the planer. What a tool! Ran it down one edge of the Versalam to get rid of the glue...
and then planed down the other edge for a real nice tight fit into the slot in the transom. Drew the cut lines and set it aside.
Next I put the long Versalam back up on the sawhorses. Glad I've got five of them, at 19' I needed all of them. :-) Very carefully set the angle on the Skilsaw and made a couple shallow cuts on one end to get the spacing exactly right to split that really expensive piece of wood in half. After cutting it, I carried one piece outside to turn it around lengthwise and when I set it side-by-side with the other one they're within a 64th of an inch of each other. Yay!
Now came the hard thing for the day, cutting (with the Skilsaw) the multiple angles necessary to shape the Versalam to match the curve of the hull. You start at 12 degrees and work your way through 14, 16, 19, 21, 24, 29 and 37 degrees out at the tip. I intentionally cut wide of the line and then using the planer set to its shallowest depth, 1/64", and eased up to it. There's an art to this boat building thing and while shaping the stringer I really started to get comfortable with the free-handing necessary to blend all those angles together.
Don't they look nice?
Next I cut the angles on the small Versalam and then cut the ends of the shelves at an angle for a scarf.
Made lots of sawdust doing all this cutting, and figured I was done cutting for the day, so cleaned everything off and swept the floor real well, carefully putting wood, sawhorses and tools out of the way for the epoxy work to come.
I set up the epoxy station and then laid the shelves out on the floor again carefully measuring everything again. I wanted to get the front two pieces on each side scarfed together so when I cut them width wise everything will line up well. I had to do a little trimming with the planer to get the first two pieces to line up correctly on the scarf, but had no problems with the other two. Some strategic screws and I was off to the transom. I found a really flat spot on the floor and laid the transom down and got the Versalam ready for epoxy. Finally, I set the stringers out so I could epoxy all the knots (they soak up lots of epoxy and they're a weak spot in the board, so adding epoxy now seals them and strengthens them).
Mixed up a batch of epoxy and liberally coated the slot in the transom and then made another batch and coated the Versalam and decided to leave them open and let the epoxy soak in. Then I went and applied lots of epoxy to the scarfs on the shelves, propping them apart for now. Went back to the transom and added a little more epoxy, flipped the Versalam into place and screwed it down. Took a chip brush and liberally coated all the knots on one face of the stringers and all the knots on the faces of the shelves. Then took the last of the epoxy, made some peanut butter and liberally coated the scarfs for the shelves and screwed them down tight. Took the last of the peanut butter and pushed it into the couple of small gaps in the transom.
Called it a night at 10 pm and considered it a successful day!
12 Hours