Friday, July 24, 2009

2nd Sheer Lamination/Started Fairing

This week I have been gluing the second sheer lamination on the port side. I have not been making a lot of progress just an hour here and there. Nothing exciting or new with the lamination process its the same as the previous post.
While waiting for the epoxy on the sheer to dry I picked up my Stanley hand plane and began planing the port chine. 3-4 hours later i was close enough to where I think the finished chine should be that I stopped in fear of planing off too much wood. I enjoy the planing/fairing its kinda fun in the way that widdling wood could be called fun.

I got to thinking about how much time I could save with a hand held electric power plane and remember seeing one at Harbor Freight, my favorite el cheapo tool store. The next day I bought the electric plane for $29.99 thinking it could be a total piece of crap or work really well. (seen in the pic below) It actually works really well. I am impressed, especially for $29.99. I bet I can do the other side in half the time of the manual hand plane alone. You actually need to stop after 5 or 6 passes with the electric plane and do the rest by hand because its easy to take off too much material. In those 5-6 passes with the electric plane you take off what would take about 2 hours worth of material with a hand plane. I actually splintered a corner of my transom at the chine joint because I used the electric plane too long and it caught the edge of the transom. No big deal since the transom will get a nice veneer over the ply later. You can see the nice mess of Purple Heart shavings on the floor in the picture.
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