Use at your own parrell! Ha!

This will be my last post for the year as we're headed down to Phoenix for the Christmas week.

When I was down in Chicago visiting my friend Dale this past week, we stopped at an odd-lots type of store, and I came across a bin full of wooden beads with holes drilled through the center. My first thought was, "Aha! Parrell beads!" Just the right size.  And just $0.10 each?? Can you buy ANYTHING for ten cents these days?  So for a buck forty I got more than what I'll need for rigging the gaff jaws later in the build. Of course, you gotta wonder, for ten cents, are they going to break or wear down in thirty seconds?  As Dale said, you can't be the price...but use them at your own parrell!  [rimshot].

$0.10 wooden beads. 

I was happy to finish up all the cutouts for the stem, bulkheads, and transom before I left. When I get back from Phoenix, I'll have a big glue-up/epoxy day, and then make room for building the ladder frame that the boat will be built on. Then within a week or so, things will start to look more like a boat. Right now, it's just piles of odd-shaped lumber.

Lots of bulkhead parts

Meantime, I'm pretty pleased with how clean most of the cuts have turned out, and how my measurements so far are all checking out with the plans down to the millimeter. It's always a great relief when you break out the rule and verify that line X, which connects points Y and Z and which is supposed to be 137 mm long actually IS 137 mm long.

With regard to tools, I've been making good use of my Bosch jigsaw, my Ryobi band saw, and my friend Scott's Ryobi 10" sliding compound bevel miter saw. I replaced the general purpose blade on the miter saw with a nice diablo fine kerf 90 tpi blade. A good blade makes a world of difference.

I've also been putting my veritas block plane, edge plane, and a couple of small Japanese-style pulling planes for rounding edges. By the way, those Veritas blades are wicked sharp right out of the box. I sliced myself just taking it out of its protective bag!

A couple of people have asked how my shop is laid out. Pretty simple, really. I have my bench against the garage wall. I have set up a "power station" that holds the drill press, band saw, and router. I parallel to the bench I have set up a couple of saw horses with a 3/4" half sheet of ply as a cutting, measuring, gluing station. I have a wire rack with shelves full of boat-building stuff...glue, epoxy, bar clamps, paint stain, sanding supplies, cups, sticks, etc. at the other end of the garage, I have a stack of lumber and a (quickly filling) box of offcuts. Kinda nice really. It occupies one stall in the 3-car garage. And everything is close at hand.