The Bear Mountain Boat Shop

Interesting way of doing it, Jim. Do you have any close up photos of how it looks finished?

That is looking fantastic, Rand. Makes me want to go for a ride. :)

Jim, what about gluing a few small blocks on the inside beside a form, and after the glue has set apply pressure from above screw these blocks to the form. This would hold things better in place while you glass, with nothing in the way. It would be easy to knock these blocks off and clean the glue u...

It looks fantastic, good job.

I had to draw a picture, but now see what you are referring to, Randy. It does make some good sense. Especially on flatter sections along the stem away from the ends. But also, like you say, properly glued up and laminated between sheets of epoxied fiberglass, it should be just fine either way.

Randy, keeping it at 3/4" all the way was the method recommended, so I this is why I did it. What would be the reason to not do this, as it is easy to do? Maybe for aesthetic purposes? Strength wise it would make no difference. I did taper the stem from about 1 1/2" at the shear down 3/4&q...

I too debated this in my head a lot, and went the same way as Randy. No regrets.

That's one heck of a lot of ribs. They sure do look great. Looking forward to the rest of the (re)build.

Yeah, I too must commend you on your jig building. They make tasks much easier to do, and are sure fun to design and implement.

Great restoration job. Looking forward to seeing more as the project continues.

Looks very nice!

The strips only sit on the edges of the forms closest to the ends, so as long as that side of the forms lines up with the station mark, thickness does not matter. I used 3/4" MDF (nice to machine to shape), and covered it with aluminum tape to stop the glue from sticking, and it worked great, r...

Yeah, what Randy said. Though ash is a bit better material for bending (or so I have been told by others), In all the boats I have seen, I like the colour of the cherry with the WRC strips better, but that is just a personal choice.

Weight wise, I imagine that on the final sand of the epoxy, you remove more than the weight you add by applying varnish. Plus like Rod mentioned, you need to sand and varnish to get a nice smooth finish.

For most woodwork, I prefer to have a quarter sawn surface to finish and look at, and cut my strips to best achieve this. I found the 3/4" (5/8" effective width after machining with bead and cove) to work quite well, especially when bending and twisting and curving them at the stems. I had...