Adventures in a Mill Creek 16.5

  I have now fitted the first deck strip. This was quite tricky as the strip twists through 90 degrees between the stern and bow, so matching it neatly to the hull was impossible (for me). Instead, I left a gap where the wood twists, and I will fill it with a filler piece once the deck is complete. I am putting in a contrasting strip of walnut, so I milled up ten strips from a piece I have had lying around the garage for years. These are about 1m long, so I will need to scarf together four pieces for each side.

  My ceiling sling seems to work, and after scraping and a preliminary sand of the hull, I lifted it and flipped it over. This also gave me a chance to sweep up the floor! I will now be able to start on the deck, although I will definitely need some more strips.

  I have finished 'stripping' the hull. I did use the router as planned, on the first side, but ended up using a pull saw for the other side to make the gap for the final, middle strip. There was a lot of faffing about, mending broken strips, repairing holes, etc. Once the wood was glued in I planed everything flat(ish) with a violin makers plane, block plane and cabinet scraper. Then I filled any remaining cracks, tear-outs, knots, nail holes and screw holes with epoxy mixed with sawdust and some cab-o-sil (to lighten the colour). The next jobs are the outer stern and bow posts (in walnut) and fitting a sling to the garage ceiling so I can lift it up out of the way when I need to.

  I have now put eight strips on each side. As I am getting further down the hull, a lot more twist is needed to get them to fit...more clamps, more tape, the occasional screw and one split scarf joint and a few more gaps than before!  After the next layer, I will switch to focussing on one side only, up to the centre line. I can then use the router 'cheat' to make a straight seam.

 Fixing the strips to the hull is now underway. Here is the forth one on the port side going on.

 With all the knots in my whitewood, I will be doing a lot of scarf joints. To make this as easy as possible I have made a little jig for my bandsaw that cuts the strips with a 1 in 8 slope. Its just an angled fence and some toggle clamps to make things quick and easy. Once the scarfs are cut on the two ends, I am joining them using a 3d printed guide. This is made from PETG as this has poor adhesion to pva based wood glue (I am using Titebond original), so I don't need to use bits of polythene all over the place. The method seems to work very nicely. I had also tested (and rejected) using a router or a disk sander to make the scarfs. In my hands both these methods gave untidy joints, and made too much dust and noise.