Hey! Remember me?
Notes to self:
- Check measurements twice, again.
- Pay attention to wife.
Some things bear mentioning over and over again.
Transoms and Then Some
Inner Transom
Yellow Pine smells like Georgia.
And Sandalwood incense.
And the rosin in my grandfather’s fiddle case.
Transoms
Planing Pine
There really are great people in this world. It constantly amazes me.
I don’t have a planer. I’ve never needed one before, and don’t expect to need one again, so it doesn’t make sense to buy one, though I’ll need one several times off and on for this project. Couldn’t even find a used one locally. But a perfect stranger has come to my rescue. I posted a query on our local Freecycle bulletin board and, only hours later, Kim in Ivy offered to let me borrow theirs. Very cool. (Thanks Kim!)
Laminations & Lamentations
Epoxied stem laminations
The strips are laminated together with thickened epoxy. Barto suggests laminating the entire stem together in once piece, then cutting the whole thing apart to form the inner and outer stem portions. As Tony Thatcher pointed out to me, that task is much easier if you have a band saw handy, which I don’t. Instead, I applied tape to the strips between one of the laminations to protect them, and skipped that layer when spreading the epoxy. Once the epoxy cured, a putty knife separated the two sections. They can be trimmed and shaped separately when the time comes. Doing it this way will make a couple of tasks easier down the road.
Getting Steamed
Steam bent strips of Ash, cooling and drying
Soaking the wood helps. I knew something was different as soon as condensation started dripping out the bottom of the tube. That didn’t happen before, as though the wood was soaking up all the moisture. Still, the whole bundle had to stay in the cooker for an hour.
Cooking Wood
Ash Slab to Ash Strips
This steam bending stuff is not exactly rocket science, which is too bad. I mean, with rocket science you have formulas and calculations, and you do your pencil work and it all comes out right. This ain’t that. Everything I read said rule of thumb is steam 1 hour for every inch of thickness. I thought it odd that all the sources seemed to be quoting the same guy, who obviously had never tried it.
Moldy Strongbacks
Mounting the molds on the strongbacks is a tedious process. Everything has to be plumb and square and level; which is hard to do since the molds are only attached along one edge at this point. Everything wants to wiggle. Clamps help, an angle gauge serves as a jig to set the 12” waterline to the same height on every mold, and shims adjust the elevation until screws are driven in. Once a batten is tacked along the top, and a few strips are run up the sides, everything will lock in place.