The first step is always the hardest...

Hello all. Seems that I have actually gotten my keister in gear and have begun this journey. As I said in my last post, I had to start by cleaning out the garage.



That is done, not great, but it will work for now. I didn't really want to get to detialed with it as I was cranking up the saws, planer, and jointer today. That stuff makes enough sawdust for a...well, I don't have a good description for that. Let's just say it makes a metric butt-load of sawdust and I didn't want a bunch of hard work (cleaning up the garage) go for naught by adding to the pile. You can see the before and after pictures (I hope) so even though it probably doesn't look all that great, trust me it took my all of Saturday.



Anyway, I picked up the white oak on Friday afternoon at Clark's here in Houston. Anyone in this area working on their build, should consider those guys for your wood supplies. I have worked with them for the past 3 or so years building kitchen and bathroom cabinets. Rough cut is my favorite, but they do have a selection.

Ok on to the game plan. Obviously since I bought some white oak, I have decided to start by making the foils first. Figure I get the pain in the butt stuff going first, plus it consumes less of my garage for now. So I started with about 38 board feet (about $150) and began slicing and dicing this morning. My plan was to go with 2 rudders, but it seems that I miscalculated the usable portions of the oak that I got. Due to the fact that I am currently planning on building the boat in the longer cockpit option, I had to increase the overall length of the rudder to 75.25" and then add about 5" more for the run-out on the planer (has a tendency to create some problems on the ends when milling). Also on the rudder, it is 54 plus my run-out 5" putting it close to 60". When it was all said and done, I now have 6 pieces of oak that is about 48" long (2-2" thick pieces and 4-1" pieces) that are too short for the second rudder. I am thinking about cutting them down and essentiall splice them into a rudder using the epoxy to bind it all together. Anyone have any input on that I would certainly appreciate it. Either way, I will have at least one rudder that is made from full length pieces.



Once I got everything cut to length and spliced, I cranked up the jointer and trued up the edges and then ran the pieces for the rudder through the planer (not enough time today for the keel, maybe tomorrow). Once I got all of that together, I broke out the epoxy and glued it all together. I'm not real good at this epoxy thing just yet, but this is my first attempt at it, so I have room to improve. Either way, check out the pictures and see what you think.



A couple of quick things before I call it a day on this post. I must apologize for my lengthy posts as I know I can run on for a while. Maybe I shouldn't have learned to type in high school! And secondly, I guess it helps if you understand a little HTML programming with this blogging site. Seems I had to cut and paste the pictures code into this for some reason to get it where the pics weren't all jumbled up. Oh well.

later,
m...