The day commenced early with the "strongback" - a single beam of oregon - waiting in crisp winter sunshine to be transformed into the supporting spine for the formwork that will be assembled along its length.
Temporary positioning of the station forms.
The ends of the strongback have been tapered to accept the fore and aft forms.
Accurately locating the vertical position of each station form with a laser level.
The 1:1 formwork (with its fore and aft forms yet to be assembled).
The handy 1:5 scale formwork model is at left.
This was Ian's clever approach to planing multiple inclined skarf faces at once.
The wood strips in this photo are all of the "specials". That is, the thicker Aust Red Cedar strips (left) which are for the slightly deeper chine sections and the thinner Huon Pine strips (right) which are for the sheer line.
(Why the scarf joints? Because the 5.9m kayak is longer than the 4.5m milled woodstrips.)
A power plane was initially used to form the scarfs.
The horizontal length of the scarf is 8 times the woodstrip's thickness.
A small block plane is used to hand-finish the planing of the scarf.
Bill providing a valuable pair of hands.
Mixing up the West Systems resin for bonding the scarf joints.
Applying the resin evenly to both faces of the scarf.
The scarf joints are clamped and left to cure overnight.
Bill completing the assembly of the strongback's station forms as evening arrives.
With night rain pleasantly falling on the workshed's roof it's satisfying to flick on the laser level and see that all of the station forms are correctly aligned and positioned in three-dimensional space.
Thanks to Ian and Bill for their valuable guidance and assistance today.
