1-3-12.

Working on a place for the kingplank.  As mentioned earlier, there's nothing in the plans for this, so we are modifying and doing our own thing.  We had to cut out the top of the spine piece here to make room for the board to sit down under the deck.  

We'll have more precision cutting to do once the kingplank is taking shape - right now it's still just an unshaped board.  You can also see the gunnels at the bow - I think we're going to round them off to make a curve there.  

Daddy is good at cutting pretty shapes out of the curly maple (this wood is extremely hard - it tends to bend the saw blade and it takes forever to sand!).  Here he is cutting out the newly designed seat supports.  The first design we nice, but we didn't have a way to really attach them well to the centerboard case, so he went back with practicality in mind and I think came out with something that looks even nicer.  The redesigned shape is below: 

Planing the gunnels - the old fashioned way!  Daddy planed the port side and I did the starboard side.  It took some getting used to handling the planer and getting the blade at the right depth, but once I figured it out it went fairly smoothly and the gunnel turned out mostly even along the whole width.  We planed the undersides to have a nice angle from the gunnel to the side of the boat.   

There is lots of cleaning up involved - all kinds of wood chips, sawdust, wood scraps, etc...

Yes this is clearly a narrow inner gunnel.  

We will have to shave the side of the boat to match the gunnel and the side might look a little funny with a dip there, but hopefully it won't be too obvious when everything is all flush.  

We have been working on the mast step along with the kingplank.  Above is my dad's idea for the kingplank where it holds the mast.  Instead of just having a hole in the board where the mast fits through, meaning you have to pick the mast all the way up and slide it through that hole when you are going sailing, he thought of putting a block of wood that would pivot away from the mast, allowing you to put the very bottom of the mast into the mast step at an angle, walk the mast up into the kingplank, and then secure it with the swiveling block.  This is ingenious for me because, while relatively strong, I still have trouble lifting a kind of heavy 12' tall mast in the wind up several feet to get it into a small hole.

Cutting out the hole in the mast step for the bottom of the mast.  We made the mast step out of layers of curly maple and plywood, screwing one block onto the one below it until we reached the height (flush with the top edge of the spine in the bottom of the boat).  Then we drilled out the hole through the top two blocks (one at a time so the wood wouldn't get wedged in the hole saw).  We also put a drain hole into the second block.  It is just a little rectangular hole that connects to the big hole so that water will run out instead of puddling in the mast step.  Now we just have to take the pieces apart again and add epoxy to glue them back together.  We'll also fiberglass the bottom of the hole to strengthen it where the mast will be sitting.

Today I spent the afternoon cutting out and sanding spacer blocks of maple for the gunnels.  The plans have two options for the outside edges of the boat - you can make a little decking that covers the inner gunnel and runs along the sides up to the foredeck, or you can leave the inner gunnels exposed with spacers between the side of the boat and the gunnel.  I like the look this gives - it reminds me of a Voyageur's canoe.   Plus we decided it would be way easier to construct than decking.  And so far it is really simple.  All of the spacers are based off of where the oarlocks will go - 10 inches back from the rowing seat (the oarlocks will be attached to the maple spacers).  We originally tried to do some complicated math (addition mostly) to space them evenly from there, but realized it was going to look funny with the frames not being centered and such.  Instead we just figured out where the oarlock pieces would go then worked out evenly by eyeball from there, making short pieces to go on either side of each frame - so that all the spacers will look to be the same length.  I cut them all out and then sanded them on the belt sander so that each one fits in its specific spot along the sides, then labeled all of them so they don't get all mixed up before we're ready to glue them in.

You can also see two transom reinforcements - the maple board along the top of the transom and the little plywood square under the tiller hole (reinforcement where the rudder is attached).  Daddy's also been doing a lot of sanding inside the hull and he cut out the hole for the drain plug in the bottom of the transom today, also.  We've also dry fitted the gunnels and seat supports and pre-drilled them ready to epoxy on when the weather warms back up.