One of the reasons I wanted to build a wooden boat was because I love woodworking. Little did I know that with this method of building I would spend as much time finishing the wood with epoxy resin, paint and hours of sanding. As a shipwright I passed the boat over to the 'finishers' to ...'er, finish!
So when it came time to sand all the inside of the boat again, for weeks, my heart sank. Then it dawned on me that I could mix carpentry and sanding ... do them in parallel.
I thought I would start with the Inwales: which are strips that run inside the top plank (inside the gunwales). Before I could do that, I needed to clean up the mess the fibre glass blanket makes when it laps over the top plank - see picture below.
Rather than rip lots of sanding-disks to pieces on the glass, I decided to take my Japanese rasp 'thing' and file off the lumps of glass.
This was very successful and I got all around the gunwale in just over an hour. I then cramped on the inwale, or rather the first part of the inwale as it has to be made from two pieces of Douglas Fir, which I will have to laminate in place.
You can see, in the picture above, the piece of Douglas Fir clamped on at the top edge isn't quite long enough to reach the bow so I will need do add a smaller piece using a scarf-joint - which we will deal with when I get to that stage.
The Douglas Fir is 2 x 0.5 inch (45 x 11 mm) - the reason for using this type of timber is it is straight grained, knot free and strong.
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