Mast Partner and Gate

I glued up my mast partner and gate last night. This morning I got up and trimmed up them both. The mast partner, as drawn, was covering a small portion of my forward deck plate so I had to trim it a bit more. I glued her to the deck.

Even though it is not some exotic hardwood, it will look fine and perform perfectly.

Now comes the mast gate. The plans call for a thickness of 1-3/8". I laminated two 3/4" pieces together which meant that my gate was 1/8" too thick. So I whipped out my plane and went to it. 

I'm not quite sure what happened, but I wound up planing off too much on one edge and not enough on the other edge!?? One possible explanation is that my blade is chipped and was leaving a little ridge on each pass. I guess with several passes the difference got multiplied. Not sure. I was fully aware that I had chipped my blade on the power planer when I was planing the floorboards. I hit a nail that I did not see in the repurposed wood. I thought about changing the blade before doing the gate but got too lazy. Shame on me!

Now what to do? It was a nice piece. Should I scrap it? Laminate another piece on? I planed it to close to square and did some sanding. It was 1/4" too thin after the mess up. I decided to just glue on two 1/4" tabs where the two bolts will go. After all, that's why the thickness was prescribed to be 1-3/8": the 1" partner plus the thickness of the flotation chamber lid. So here ya go:

Of course, those tabs will be on the underside. No one will ever know if we don't tell them! 

While I was at it, I glued a plug into the mast and filled the beetle holes too.

I left the plug proud so that I can sand it down even with the surface. I aligned the grain but as I tapped in the plug, it rotated. I wasn't going to pull it out. After initial inspection, no one will ever see it.