Recent content by sailsman63

Looks like a nice paddle. I'm a little jelly. Some of the backwaters off of the Lower Wisconsin look kind of like that (W/different tree species) when the spring run is up. Right now, all my local water is kinda hard.

I haven't abandoned the build, just not a lot exciting to show. (Also still have my camera out of commission.) I've been playing with spiling the lines for the laps: The stem forms have that little lift block to give me something to link off to at the correct half-beam, as well as a point to...

I'd second walnut as a contrast wood, especially for anything under glass: It's fairly light for a hardwood, bends well in strip-thicknesses and is soft enough that it can be worked alongside the cedar without making the cleanup/outside sanding hideously painful. I've successfully embedded it in...

Dust from the NWC will definitely affect you more than most common midwest hardwoods per exposure, and the oils are a sensitizer on top of the dust/silica concerns. Dust-rated mask whenever you are generating sawdust. If you can do your bulk milling out of doors, you can probably reduce...

Alan is right about the tradeoff between "perfect" and "good enough". Don't let the former be the enemy of the later, but only you can decide where that line is for your build(s). I have done the "Scarf each strip as I go" method. Once. I had a little jig to sand the scarfs on a disk sander...

Strongback looks like it'll be solid. You may need to temporarily brace it level when screwing it together. The most time-urgent, since it might affect your wood shopping tomorrow: It might be un-intuitive, but you usually don't want vertical grain planks for your strip stock. (Assuming 1x...

You can do it that way - I've done it before - but you generally don't need that many points. @Alan Gage 's plans will have been created in a program that mimics the behavior of real life splines. You'll need one at the shoulder point, one at centerline, and maybe two additional along the curve...

Welcome! Another recruit for the Dark Side! We may not always have cookies, but our hair is usually full of sawdust. One of the best things about building on this site is how many different types of experience are represented. You might get conflicting advice at times. Don't panic! Just ask...

If the plan-sizing saga continues on, would you consider hand-lofting? You only need a few points and a flexible spline. See this post for the last time I did this - I've recently started working on that set of forms again, and I'm very pleased with how precise and consistent the curves turned...

He is bead-and-coveing. It's just that he cut his strips from a variety of planks that had inconsistent thicknesses, so the raw strips have slightly different widths. He's using the cove pass to even that out, instead of running the original planks through the planer before cutting the strips.

The gunwales look like they fitted up nice once they were "persuaded". Very clean look. I'd be very tempted to do the custom end cap in walnut, but YMMV.

I've looked. It's not present. Even walking the woods - all of it died over a decade ago. There are maybe some sapling sized stuff, and even they are dead or dying. We've still got some firewood grade - this is stuff that was drying on the stump for ten years in an inaccessible location and...

Southwest Wisconsin. The Driftless. We've got wood - Hardwood. I can find you locally harvested Hard and Soft Maples, Cherry, Walnut, Hickory, Ash, (Tulip) Poplar, Smaller quantities of Black and Honey Locust, Oak (White in reasonable quantities, Red is a weed around here.) What I can't get are...

No fir! The stuff I'm working with is Southern Yellow Pine, untreated. I have run across references to fir shedding paint, but it was usually in the context of treated ply. (Treated lumber in general has issues with paint/finish adhesion) If you had issues with untreated doing the same, I would...

Just for clarity: does the server re-code the image and store it at max 950 pixels, or is that the maximum displayed size inserted inline? If I upload, say, at 1,500 pixels in the larger dimension, will users be able to see that full resolution if they click the image to the full-screen image...