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After finishing (well, just about) sanding the inside of our hull today, we spent some time fooling around with one of my wife's Christmas presents (how did she know she needed a laser level?).
We put the laser level on a tri-pod and checked to see how true our hull is. The pictures below show the laser line shining from stern to bow. It's hard to see in the picture but the laser hit pretty close to the center of the inner stem on the bow end and laid a line pretty close to the keel line.
Our real purpose for doing this was to ensure that the stems were plumb as it sat on our rests so we could check the level of the sheerline. We need to trim the sheerline near the bow and stern and wanted to ensure we were starting with the stems plumb. The sheer line was cut somewhat rough and needs to be trued up before we put on gunwales.
Placing a level across the canoe at station 0 showed a pretty level condition there as well so we don't have to trim there (as expected, but it was good to verify).
We should be ready to glass the inside next weekend...
We've completed the glassing of the inside and have started to trim up the sheerline near the bow and stern. This turned out to be more difficult than expected. We found that it was somewhat difficult to lay a level perfectly perpendicular to the centerline of the canoe to judge the port and starboard sides of the canoe for level. With the steep curve on the bow and stern of the Redbird, being off just a bit makes a big difference in the reading of the level.
We figured out an approach that worked pretty well for us (probably overkill - as usual).
We pulled out that laser again. We set it up to paint a vertical line that sweeps down the station line and across both sheerlines. This made it easy to see where to lay the level and how much trimming needed to be done at each station. We moved the laser down the sheerline from station to station (and a couple places in between if needed) to trim the sheerlines.
We should be ready to mill and hopefully bend our inwales this weekend.
I know the "old time" canoe builders didn't have lasers but for $30 I couldn't resist putting it to use.
