Gunwales and Floors

I kept the three building forms in the hull as long as possible, which wasn't very long. My first task was sanding all the various epoxy drips that we had missed during the planking. After that, all the inside seams needed to be filleted and then sanded. Part way through this process I bought the profile sanding attachment for our Fein Multimaster. That was a huge timesaver! The price seemed silly until I had used it for an hour.

The above photo was taken when I was gluing on the outwales. The outwales, inwales, and spacer blocks are all made from curly ash. I was going to use plain ash, but I found some really nice curly ash boards when I was visiting my hardwood supplier and somehow they ended up in my truck. There is also a curly ash strip, about 1/4" thick, laminated to the edge of the sheer plank.

Here's a view of the nearly completed gunwale. The open gunwales really look nice on the boat, but they were much more work. There are 54 spacer blocks around the sheer; each one had to be cut, beveled, etc. Now that it's done, though I'm really happy I did it.

I don't have a very good photo yet of the breasthooks, but I added them after the gunwales. The plans show the inwales going all the way to the stems with small, triangular breasthooks fitted between them, so that's what I did. The breasthooks are also ash and will be finished bright along with the gunwales.

Here's a bow view with the floors. They run the width of the garboards at the station lines, with one exception. The forward-most floor is on the line of the aft edge of the foredeck. I have not decided yet if I'm going to install a full bulkhead or not, so I went ahead and added a floor (the plans call for a cleat on the bulkhead). Also, the floor at station 4 is missing, because it will have to be installed in two halves around the centerboard trunk.

Speaking of the centerboard trunk, click here so see it's construction and installation.