Thanks, I will definately have a look, I made up a jig to cut the spray rails for my Viper years ago, they were pine, but not as tough as spruce. I dont have a decent circular saw, and my spiralux fretsaw, despite having a nice 0.5mm width of cut for less waste, is too wandery in thicker materials.
A jig sounds the way to go, I made a jig for my router to cut 9mm half rounds from 8 foot lengths of dowel, these were rubbing strips for the Viper. I fed dowel into wrong side of it, it dragged it out of my hand and fired it 25 feet down the garden! And wrecked my jig.
Is obeche easier to work than spruce?
I have been quite busy the last couple of days, getting my plan to the stage where I could transfer it to wood. I drew the keel and transom on 1/4 ply.
I used 1/8 ply for the keel doublers ( the straight section from bulkhead B3 to transom) cockpit sides, deck supports and bulkheads.
I have still to draw up the doublers for keel forward of B3, I thought about separate pieces fitted between bulkheads, cut from offcuts rather than doing them in one big bit for each side. Then I thought it would probably be better doing them as one piece, for accuracy?
So with most of my bits drawn on the wood last night, I was pleasantly surprised to wake up to a nice day.
After a few chores, I got my workmate out, jigsaw inverted in the jaws and clamped up, some masking tape on the jigsaw foot to protect my nice new plywood and I was ready for some cutting out.
It always takes a bit longer than you think. I had to draw the sides after I had cut out my deck supports, to get the bottom curve correct for them.
A couple of hours of cutting, I have to stop often, my shoulder and chest still not very useful yet.
About half an hour of sanding got all my edges sharp to the lines, I will mark the stringer positions etc later.
Quite happy with my progress today. Thats all the bigger bits cut out, I prefer to do all the rest of the bits as custom fitted bits, once the framework is dry fitted together for a look.
Not sure whether to go for hard balsa stringers, or spruce. Balsa worked fine on first Javelin, the balsa skins were actually less bendy than 1/16 ply and didnt distort when skins were pulled into position, so balsa stringers might be/ should be ok. Not decided finally but I did manage to cut a nice set of balsa ones earlier, much easier to sand when the time comes......
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Topic: Andy M's scratchbuilt Javelin project (Read 12480 times)