The boat they made on GardenFork.tv, which I was using as the basis for my design, was made of a single sheet of plywood. It was about 24” wide with sides about 12” high. Though Eric from GardenFork.tv is a trim guy, his narrow boat road very low in the water when he launched it as a solo passenger. As I wanted to be able to take my kids (and even other adults) in the boat with me, I decided I would need two (2) sheets of plywood.

With this as a plan, I headed straight to Lowes once we were settled in at Lake George (and I was back from the trip to Fine Woodworking Live I made immediately after arriving).

Yep, thats what a boat looks like before its put in the water.

Since the ¼” luan I used on the mock boat was awfully damn thin, and the plywood bottom would need to support me, I opted to use ?” CDX plywood. Though it was bowed and coarsely textured as most CDX is, I felt it provided me the best mix of strength, weight and cost. For the battens, I chose to switch to 2”x2”, so the tips of the screws wouldn’t poke through the ¾” thickness of the 1”x used in the mock boat. I also bought some 2”x4”, metal saw horse brackets and a small drop cloth so I could work at a comfortable height and keep the mess in check.

Ready for ripping!

In the parking lot, I had to rip down the 4’x8’ sheets of plywood before they would fit inside my truck. This being upstate New York, there was no problem woodworking in the parking lot.More (Ply)Wood Boat Posts.

Read More..

A few weekends ago I was lucky enough to attend the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event they Hosted at the 3rd Ward in Brooklyn. I was able to talk tools and woodworking with many old friends and I made some new ones too. An old friend I met there was Matt Kenney of Fine Woodworking. Matt was there for the magazine. He spent his time working behind a bench and chatting with people as they came by.

Matt chats with an attendee while cutting dovetails.

Apparently, after I left Matt was called out for Cheating by an event attendee. For, Matt had committed the infraction of using a paring guide while cleaning out the baseline of the tails he was cutting.Cheating? No. As Matt told the event attendees, “There’s no such thing as cheating in Woodworking.” He does a great job of elaborating his point in a blog entry on the Fine Woodworking site.

Caught, red handed.

Cheating? Really? I don’t get the commenter. What makes woodworking so wonderful is that there’s no right choice to do anything. From how we cut a dovetail to what joinery method we choose in the first place, there are almost as many choices to accomplish the task as there are woodworkers. I’d hate to hear what the commenter would say of my drawers, jointed with 5 mm Dominos. And yet, they somehow work wonderfully.Thankfully, it’s not just me and Matt who think this of woodworking. From Todd Clippinger sharpening his scrapers with just a file to Shannon Rogers making everything by hand there is no correlation between the method a woodworker chooses and the results. Just practice the method with care and skill, and the results will be a wonderful piece.Want to see Todd cheat? Check out how he sharpens his card scraper.

Do you folk cheat?

Read More..