The aft seat

First I wanted to smoothen the mahogany edgings of the thwart with a plane.   As my planes were getting dull I first sharpened them on a waterstone. 

I have a honing guide to get the right angle when sharpening.  The length out of the honing guide determines the angle of the blade.

To simplify the measurement process I made a jig with the right lengths for 25 and 30 degrees,.  Easy does it.

After the smoothening I made a soft edge at one side on the router table. As I had not yet bunged the holes for the positioning screws in the mahogany the router wheel went through the hole making a slight dent in the edging. Not very clever.  The bungs will be made later but first I wanted to use the thwart to measure the position of the side seats and screw them to the seat beams.


Making the aft seat was relatively easy. Nice to see the effect of of having the seats in.

Next step is everything out again and rounding the edges with the router.  Also the screw holes are bored with a 8 mm bit to be able to bung the holes in a later stage.

The seats wil not be glued to the beams but only screwed.

Now it is time for bunging the mahogany edgings.

First I made 8 mm holes in a role masking tape on the drillpress.  Nice trick I learned from a book. Now you don't smear the wood with epoxy while bunging.

I used red cedar for bungs. They are a little more flexible than mahogany bungs and give a nice detail hopefully.

Finally I did put epoxy primer on the backsides of the side and aft seats.  I am running a bit low on epoxy and primer so I have to buy some extra stuff.  Also a good moment to  buy the paint for the outside of the hull. My plan is to use white.  The only problem is that my epoxy supplier is almost 2 hours driving.  Maybe I can ask someone to pick it up for me.


Don't have a program yet for tomorrow but I think I will round the front seat and also prime the backsides.