11-1.

Started work on the rudder case and tiller tonight.  This past weekend, Daddy cut out strips of red cedar and curly maple for the rudder, which we'll deal with after we've done the rudder case I think.  The case is going to be made out of red cedar with curly maple spacers, and the tiller will have a curly maple core with red cedar strips on the outside.  We're kind of following the plans for all of this and kind of doing our own thing.  We're also using the Blue Tang (the ~12' Spindrift that my dad built years ago) rig as an example to follow - we had considered using this set up entirely, but realized that it probably wouldn't work well with the Truant's transom (there's a slot for the tiller to come through).  

Brian lent us his bench planer (and lots of clamps and another electric hand planer (way easier to use than the wooden one that looks straight from the 1800's that my dad has), and plenty of other tools and useful things I'm sure).  Anyway, we sent the curly maple through several times until it was looking curly and beautiful, and was 25 mm thick.  Then we drew the tiller from the plans, using a rounded end like that on the Blue Tang, and cut it out.  

We also drew out the rudder case on a piece of red cedar, cut that out, traced it onto a second piece of cedar and cut that out, too.  I still have trouble rounding corners with the jigsaw, so we had to modify the top because I cut out too much on the second piece - oops!  We just re-cut the first piece to match, and now we'll sand them together to make sure all the edges line up perfectly.  We also had to move the lines for where the tiller will fit into the rudder case from one piece to the other.

The red cedar has lots of knots, which is actually bad for use in boat building because they are all weak spots, but we are figuring we'll coat all of this in enough epoxy (and the rudder itself in fiberglass) to protect it, and while it may not be fit for crossing an ocean, it'll be lovely and unique!