Birdsmouth Frustration

I spent 5 hours yesterday and 2 hours this morning (yes - 7 hours!) on the mast staves. Now mind you, they were already cut. My plan was to cut the birdsmouth notch in them and coat the inside face of each stave with epoxy. That would get them ready for glue-up. 

The first thing I did was mark the taper. After cutting the birdsmouths, I will be ready to run them through the band saw to get them tapered for glue-up. 

Time to haul them up to the front where my table saw is. 

Well, a 17' stave is flimsy and running them through a saw to do a cut that requires some precision is no easy task for one man. I asked my wife to help, but she was unable until the afternoon. Eager as I was, I didn't wait. I rigged boxes, stools, pails, etc to act as 2 extra sets of hands and set about cutting my first birdsmouth.

I totally mutilated the first stave! TOTALLY!!!! Ruined! 

Decided I needed to wait until she could help.

In the afternoon when she was available, we went at it again. All went pretty well. I got all seven of the remaining staves cut. One was "iffy" and looked more like a "modified" birdsmouth, but the other 6 looked pretty good. I'll make them work.

I don't know how I manage to do it, but being as precise as I can be, I still wind up with variations in my cuts. All in all, when I'm finished, I don't think the average person will know any difference.

But that still left the 8th stave. I had a nice piece of the DF left over that I bought from the bowling alley guy. This was the 12' piece. One third of the piece looked pretty close to clear. Certainly I can get 2 strips out of it and make another stave.

I went about ripping it. This time with my skill saw. I clamped a 12'x1"x4" board to the DF to act as a fence and went  about it. First strip was a disaster. That saw was working awfully hard. Binding etc! Why won't that saw cut straight?! The second was not much better but I cut it a little extra thick so that I could trim it on the band saw. The cut was still very tough. I decided to do another without the fence. I marked a line and cut it freehand. The cut went much better.

Took my two good strips down to the  workshop and ran them through the band saw to fine tune the widths. 

One was totally clear up to 11'. The other had one small knot in it. I measured and, of course, only needed 17'. I had 24' with the two strips. So I was able to cut one foot off the first strip and the second strip at about the 7' mark and avoid the knot altogether.

Then I made the cuts for the scarf. When I went to dry fit the two pieces, one was a full 16th of an inch wider than the other. How does that happen?????? 

Fortunately, that was enough for me to run it through the band saw again. Now the  dry fit is better though still not perfect. It will work though. Epoxy is a boat builder's best friend! 

Ran out of time. I will glue the scarf tonight and be ready to cut the birdsmouth in it probably tomorrow.

Whew! Hours and hours!! But it's still progress.