"Wow"

Its been a while since i actually talked about boats. Fortunately, the cold has subsided, and the rain, rain has gone to Spain. My feet, knees, and ankles have been unhappy for a few weeks due to some spraining and straining post V-town and the Cheech, and mobility has been painful and limited. Most nights were spent falling asleep in front of the wood stove with my feet in a tub of salty water. But today was sunny, 60 degrees, and I'm going sailing tomorrow. Actually, I'm helping someone "borrow a friend's" 14' lapstrake centerboard daysailer with serious leaks to go for a joyride. Glad I'm the dude with a 4wd 'bru and a trailer hitch. But, alas, tomorrow is another day...more on that later, hopefully.

Last week i switched shops to help my buddy Eric build his 12' lapstrake Grandy Skiff. Its just like ours without the centerboard and sailing rig. His shop is totally unheated except for a few sparingly used "torpedo" style propane heaters, thus helping to fulfill my "winter in the boatshop" dreams. Oh wait. That was until i lived in an icebox as a cripple for the last 2 weeks. Now i get to be cold all day at school, too. Hmmm. Not sure what i was thinking. (I wasn't thinking much, as i forgot my camera in the car for a few days. Pictures of keels and rabbets later...) 

Now i remember: the Jedi Master. A major benefit of the cold shop is that Ray Speck is the instructor. Imagine if Yoda actually spoke straight, was white,tall, and skinny. Years ago, Ray became one with the tool. He then became one with the wood. Now, we are fairly certain that he works the wood with his mind. The tool has become obsolete. This guy knows boats.

I was hacking the keel of our boat out of a 150 dollar piece of straight grained Alaskan Yellow Cedar and needed to draw the rabbet line. The rabbet is the groove along the keel that the planks fit into. (Start counting now. If someone gives you a nickel for every time i write rabbet in the next 9 months, you'll be rich.)Its also where boats always leak like hell, right before they sink to the bottom. So, I was pretty serious about making sure this line was transferred correctly from our lofting, via clear plastic (mylar), onto my grossly expensive stick of wood. So I'm ready to lay the mylar onto my stock and Yoda comes over and says,
"Yeah, it should go sort of like this..." and draws a perfectly curved line connecting the four dots i had plotted over the 10' length of my stick. I looked at him like he had just levitated an X-wing fighter. It was a perfect arc, and took him about 3 seconds. I drew the line on the other side pretty accurately, but vaguely bumpy. It only took me 5 minutes.

I then hand planed down the bottom of the keel, attempting to fair it out evenly, as it has about a quarter of an inch of rocker. Yoda apparently detected a disturbance in the force, so he came over to check on me. He leans over, sighting down my long, thin keel clamped in my bench vise.
"Oh man, you got a lotta 'wow' in there."
I said, "You mean, like, 'oh wow', that's crooked as shit?"
"Something like that. Sight down the keel, and knock of the high spots, but be careful, cause this is where you'll plane a flat spot into your curve."

Then he scampered off to Wow some other hapless fool while i sweated through the low spots. I then asked him to come back and check, cause i just couldn't see if what i was looking at was acceptable.
"I'm not sure what I'm looking at here, Ray. I'm looking for Wow and i just can't see it."
"You can't see it? Well that's cause it aint there!" I guess i got it.

Off he scurried, and i set the keel aside, confident in my leak proof bevels and the fairness of my wow-free curves. The next task on Monday will be to chase more rabbets on the keel batten, the last portion of the keel assembly.