Preliminaries
There are several things that need to be done before you can start assembling your boat:
- You will need to remove any
roughness left by the router bit
in the gains with a sharp chisel. The gains should be at least 3" long, and should taper to
almost a knife edge. Be sure to keep the side of the gain sharp and square to the face.
- Clean up any fuzz left by the router bit in the stepped scarf so that the two
surfaces will mate properly. Use either a sanding block with 80-100 grit sandpaper
or a sharp scraper. Try to leave the step edges intact, and just remove any stray
wood fibers
- Be careful with the scarf edges and the gains when handling the planks; they are fragile.
- Remember when you are gluing scarfs to put waxed paper under and on top of each
scarf joint to keep from gluing the planks to the table top ( or each other).
- When assembling the hull, alternate the scarfed ends so that the scarfs
don't line up with the ones on the planks below. In other words, if the scarfs are at
the bow end of plank 6, they should be at the stern end on plank 5