Boat Building Forum

Find advice on all aspects of building your own kayak, canoe or any lightweight boats

Progress! (Boards scarfed for CLC LT 17)
By:Bill Jankowski
Date: 2/12/2000, 10:18 am

Life is good. I've finished scarfing my panels for my Chesapeake LT 17. I was actually suprised at how easy it was to scarf the panels once I put the plane to wood. It looked just like the pictures in the book. Just a tip: when you do it, make sure that you do at least 2 pieces at a time, with the sheets staggered at the scarf ratio that you want. That way when you set the plane on the edges you're cutting off, it already at the right angle. The biggest problem I had was in adjusting the 'Throat?' or whatever it is that sets the depth of cut. I spent a while not taking much but dust off, then would adjust and get stuck, then adjust back to dust, then not get stuck so much... etc. Once I dialed it in, I had no problems.

Thanks to all for the emphasis on sharpening blades. I spent an hour and a half learning that it would have been worth the extra bucks to buy a higher quality blade instead of investing that much sweat equity in getting a good edge. Admittedly, it's not too hard to resharpen the blade now, but it was tough getting here.

The only problem that I ran into was a couple of (small) knots in the middle layer of the birch plywood that I'm using. Is this typical? I didn't find any voids looking at the edges, and it all seems pretty solid, but they did catch my plane blade a couple of time.

Again, thanks to all. I'm at a standstill while I wait for epoxy to arrive so I can glue the scarfs and cut out the hull panels. Now I'm off to learn HTML so I can put up yet another boat building page, and show the world my filthy basement. For all of you other former lurkers, clean out the basement, break out the checkbook, and get hot! It's not as hard as you think it is (Unless there's a 800 pound gorilla waiting around the proverbial corner).

Bill Jankowski

PS Thanks a lot for hosting this resource, Nick. This is possibly the biggest reason that I got off my butt and started mangling wood and dreaming of making something that floated.

Messages In This Thread

Progress! (Boards scarfed for CLC LT 17)
Bill Jankowski -- 2/12/2000, 10:18 am
Re: Progress! (Boards scarfed for CLC LT 17)
Johnnie McNeely -- 2/12/2000, 9:37 pm
Re: Progress! (Boards scarfed for CLC LT 17)
Hank -- 2/12/2000, 5:26 pm