Dio vs Yak rnd 5

Well, kinda.

More like Dio had to think his way out of a self inflicted wound.

When cutting scarf joints, you need to add the length of the cut TO BOTH PEICES to be joined. (and I am certain there is a carpenter or three out there than can say, “Duh!”)

Yeah,,, I’m a mechanic/welder. Things like this don’t come up much. Anywhoos, I scarfed the gunwales together today and immediately saw I was short by over a foot. As in the length of my scarf of 19″. I should have caught it before setting up glue joints, but my overconfident, smug side had kicked in.

Hammer to thumb, lesson learned.

Well, I did do one thing right; I made a jig that holds the wood to be scarfed, and has a guide screwed on top of that that leads the circular saw, so each cut is identical. Basicly, its a one-off miter box for only one angle. Its danged long though because of the length of the scarf I’m cutting.

So, I have two peices of foreshortened gunwale laid up in the rafters tonight. Letting that gorrilla glue cure. Its cool out, and I have a fire going so they should be beam solid tomorrow. THEN, I can ‘fix’ my boo-boo by adding on another joint. Measured out, I can make sure both scarf joints lay near the middle of the boat so they won’t have as much twisting pressure as they would near bow or stern. And I could still laminate them together, scarf joints staggered around, and recut the while bloody mess. It will take as many days longer to do that, but then again, I don’t expect this yak to see water before March, more due to seasons than time of build.

I could so kick my own butt over this, but its a lesson I won’t soon forget.

🤕