Days 26 to 29 - Finishing Touches on Hull and Start Shaping Oars

Finishing the outside of the hull ready for sealing didn't involve a lot of work but was spread out over several days. The first job was to fit a sacrificial strip of hardwood along the keel. This was held in place with temporary nails until the glue set. While waiting the outer gunwales were rounded off on their lower edge and the hull sanded. A batch of epoxy was mixed up with a fairing compound to fill a few nail holes, dents, etc. I must have made a mistake with the pumps (perhaps two of resin and one of hardener?) because it was still too soft to sand 48 hours later so I scraped it off and tried again. Second time lucky! Here is the hull ready for sealing at the end of day 29. It is actually quite shiny with the dust vacuumed off.

While I waited for the dodgy batch of epoxy I started shaping the oars, the blanks were glued up some time ago. The best way of removing the waste timber from the front and back of the blade would be with a bandsaw but, unfortunately, my bandsaw can only cut 100mm so could not be used. Rather than making multiple saw cuts, chopping the waste out with a chisel and then finishing with planes and spokeshave I decided to use my router. I build a jig in the form of a channel wide enough to hold the blade of the oar. The sides of the jig were shaped to the profile of the concave side of the blade. I added a pywood shoe to my router. The router was placed on top of the jig and slid about, increasing the depth of cut by about 5mm increments. Here is a photo of the setup.

Viewed from the side the concave curve of the jig can be seen. The other 3 shaped blanks can be seen in the background.

I made a similar jig to shape the other (convex) side of the blade. This approach may sound complex and time consuming but each jig took less than an hour to make and using them to remove the waste took about 15 minutes per side for each blade. The total time was about 4 hours, far less than than the sawcut and chisel approach. Finishing them will be easier too.