The Boat

This boat would break in two, that would be sawed in half when the hull was complete. So in the lengthwise center were two pieces of plywood back to back, that would be the back of the front and the front of the back of the boat.They may have been slightly spaced for a saw blade to separate them. I am guessing I laid in the oak keel centered on the ribs. Then laid a strip of sixteen foot redwood the length of the boat, tacked and glued to each of the ribs. The front was an L shaped piece of Oak notched into the keel. The back of the boat was flat and narrow about eighteen inches wide.

Then the redwood strips which originally was bender board for concrete work four to six inches wide and maybe a quarter inch thick and twenty feet long - I had milled to an eighth inch thick by half inch wide strips for the hull, which in one piece seventeen feet long, was glued and nailed to each rib. Starting at the center I worked out and down gluing each strip to the adjoining until reaching the end of the forms.

I believe I then sawed the boat in half and turned the boat over right side up, and pried each form from each rib of which the early tacks had embedded. The tacks obtruded about an eighth of an inch and so I cut them off with a nail cutter. So I had a boat, but now I had to affix the oak rails I think a half inch thick and still bendable bowing from front to wide in the middle to narrow back.

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