Thanks John, interesting idea. I don't have a drum sander but I wonder if the technique could work with a large hand plane; I'm pretty accurate with it. Gluing the blocks side-by-side would give me much better uniformity. I'll have to test it out.

: Hi Chip,

: I'm sorry you have problems but I really like your design pattern and if I
: build another boat I would like to try something like that. With a table
: disk sander it would be easy to quickly reproduce the repeating patterns
: pieces of wood. Say for the diamonds, you would make your master dimond
: and then spot hot glue six or so stacked pieces of wood together with the
: master dimond on top and hit it up against your sander and you have six
: extra's within a minute all exactly alike. As far as straightening your
: long peice, you might slit saw it from the side as intervals and put glue
: in the slit and clamp it to a long straight piece of wood. Good luck.

: John