I's the b'y that builds the boats...

Posted By: Carl, Horizon Cat/Picnic Cat, Central Texas
Date: 7/21/08 7:57a.m.

Report: outside forum guidelines

In Response To: Quite the crew (link) (Tom Ray)

Truthfully, I'm not building a boat, not yet, I'm just building a piece of a boat. This weekend I made a 'sled' for my cheapo table saw to cut 8:1 scarfs in small pieces. Saturday I finished cutting up strips of fir to make a centerboard but didn't have enough knot-free wood to do all the strips as single pieces. With the sled I'll end up with four of the strips made up with scarf joints. All that agonizing over getting a scarf joint to work, and the first ones I've done fit with nicely machined surfaces and seem absolutely true, at least prior to gluing. But what really amazes me is how many decibel-hours I can make with a saw and a planer and still not have much done. Just goes to show what a wonderful material wood is. You'd think there must be some limit to how much noise you can blow out per board-foot, but if there is, I haven't found it yet. Once I do, I guess I'll build the next piece of a boat. Funny, too. As a kid I spent many an hour helping my Dad build stuff and didn't think too much about power tools. There were rules and I didn't break them. Now, though, when I look at a running table saw it looks like something out of an Edgar Alan Allan Poe nightmare. Fearsome things, power saws.