Stem prep

25 April 2014

You can see the results of my first pass on planing the two sheets of 6 mm plywood and in particular the transition near station three.  I ended up taking some of the 'too close to the edge screws' out and did a modest amount of clean up.  One could spend an infinite amount of time here.  The 

I labelled all the pieces.

I put quite a number of holes in each piece in preparation for the glue up.  I decided to use plain old Home Depot #8 screws even though I had a few boxes (read a few hundred dollars worth) of #6 and #8 silicon carbide screws.  Using the cheapo screws was a bad decision.  After the epoxying the inner layer I found that the head twisted off about 1 in 20.  If I used the silicon carbide I'm sure they would have stood up better to the torque from the wrench.  I countersunk holes along the edges and the middle of the outer layer to make sure 

You can see the outer 6 mm pieces (the third, fourth and fifth from the stem) in the photo below.  I've planed down the two layers so that they meet the bottom of the hog.  I warn all future builders that it is very easy to take too much off the hog and top of the planking and cause a local dip in the plane of the hog where it will meet the keel.  I have not attached the keel yet, but I foresee some kind of filling in of a few modest, few millimeter, swales in the hog.  I will either epoxy in some sort of sacrificial piece that I can plane more carefully and evenly, or I will attempt to fill in with some epoxy.  

Working to get the stem in in a single plane perpendicular to the center line of the boat.

A work in progress.

Still in progress.  The bulge in the sheathing on the left side of the photo was more prominent than I would have liked.  In the glue up I used some clamps to better align and clamp to the inner stem.