Making a Plank

To make the bottom of the boat appear as one continuous piece of wood, scarf joints are needed. With the fairly narrow width of the bottom of the hull it makes it an easier job for my first attempt at scarfing plywood.

So here I have some 9mm Okume and I have marked out from the end of the plywood lines to indicate where to sand to to give a 12:1 ratio angle. On the bottom is some 12mm ply to stop the lower piece from bending at the edge. This stack is all sitting on a large wooden beam to raise it off the ground making it easier to work. Then using a belt sander I sand to give the two pieces a matching angle, this is basically the same method I used for the stringers.

Then I lined up the lengths of ply with the laser level, glued and clamped. The result was a perfectly straight plywood plank about 7 metres long.

Stringers all on

Now that the stringers are all on, the shape of the boat is clear. Before putting the stringers on I found it hard to visualise the inner wing toward the bow as it is fairly complex how the angles converge, but it ended up being quite straight forward in practise.

Other potential KD650 builders will find this photo interesting. Locating stringer X at the stern. Using the laser level and a steel rule, x marks the spot.