Milling strips

Well again it has been some time since my last post but I have accomplished quite a bit in the last couple of months.  After finishing ripping all of the strips, next was the milling of the cove and bead on each strip.  I set up my router first with the bead bit, then the cove.  WHY?  Well the bead can take more abuse than the thin edges of the cove so it is best to do that first.

Here is a video of the milling.

After completion, I counted all of the strips and came up with about 140 total.  Doing the math this comes out to just over 1200 feet or almost 1/4 mile!  I thought that was pretty good.

Installing the first strip:
The next step was putting on the first strip.  Using my newly sharpened block plane, I planned down the strip so that it would bend nicely to the shape of the boat.

And just like that the first strip was on.  Ok, it may have been a little more work than that but it is now looking good.  At this point I consider myself about 1/3 of the way through the project.  The first 1/3 being the form building and milling the strips, the second being installation of the strips, and the final 1/3 being finishing.

I also added a couple of 3M products to my list.  One was a 3M half face respirator with the P100 particulate filters installed.  I used this when ripping and routing the strips so I didn't have to suck in the cedar dust.  The next was a 3M hot melt applicator (glue gun) and 3M hot melt glue.  So counting these as 4 different products brings my total 3M product usage up to 16.  Pretty good for being 1/3 of the way through.

Hot melt applied to the back side of the strips to hold them to the forms.

I have decided that I will not use any fasteners (brads or staples) on this project as I don't want any small holes to deal with later on.  Also, I don't think it would look to nice to have a bunch of small staples holes scattered across the surface of the strips.  This is the reason for using the hot melt.  Once complete with the stripping, I will break the forms out and remove the hot melt.  Sounds easy!

Now I continue placing strips on as I have time.  It is actually kind of fun as it clears my thoughts as I can focus on the task at hand.  I've got plenty of details to post about strip installation so I will save that for next time.  Hopefully soon.  So far I have been pleased with my progress.  It hasn't been too difficult so far.  I have taken time, set things up correctly and once the steps are broken down, they go quite well.