If you can’t tell already, I’m a bit of a hack. In this case I’m a bit of a hack out of necessity rather than laziness. Our last post we were left with a rough cut out of Western Red Cedar, and I had bought two 8ft pine boards to glue to the cedar board to bring the board up to an acceptable thickness.
Unfortunately, Lowes doesn’t have nice 16ft knot- free quartersawn pine boards in stock at the store. Maybe there isn’t much of a market for it? Maybe kids these days would rather have a 16ft long piece of vinyl reclaimed wood? Really makes you think… smdh.,,,
So I had to resort to slapping two 8ft boards together with a scarf joint, where the additional glue surface helps to strengthen the bond between the two boards:
I chose a 8:1 scarf, meaning that I stacked my 1/2” boards 4 inches offset from each other and planed the two surfaces flat on a slope. It might make more sense in pictures:
I used the strongback as a flat surface to clamp and glue the joint together without adding any bowing to the joint. This was pretty laidback compared to edge jointing 3 16ft long boards!
Next I glued the entire cedar board (roughly the final shape of the bottom board) to the pine board and cut the pine and cedar down to the final shape.
So, at the end of the day, it was not the wood I would have wanted to use for multiple reasons, but I think it should work good enough for me. I think I am allowed to be graded on a curve!
Next, we’ll create the scaffolding to mount the bottom board, and get started on installing ribs.
Thanks for stopping by!