When I started this project, we were finishing the molds. Right away, I discovered an amazing way to lift body sections off of the loft floor. Instead of using pick up sticks and bundle batons, rip a 3/4 x 3/4 inch piece of plastic and screw the baton onto the body plan at your particular station. Then, place your mold stock on top and cut it with a router using a flush cutting bit. This eliminates any distortion that may occur when moving pick up sticks from the loft floor to the stock--and its a hell of a lot faster. The only disadvantage of doing it this way is that all of your molds and bulkheads will be cut square. To deal with square corners, we fare them with 36 grit sand paper on a long board. The two ends of the longboard will bear on the leading edge of the molds and the sandpaper will cut the bevel into the molds. This boat is strip-planked with four layers of cedar veneer so we only needed to shape the transom, bulkheads, and stem.
The boat with stringers, stem, keelson and clamp.
For this project, we have MDF molds (which are really nice because they don't warp), 1/2" plywood bulkheads (well, 2 are 3/4") and 1 1/2" plywood transom. For heavy faring, we use a 4 1/2" grinder with 80 grit sandpaper. This method seems to be the ultimate time saver, as it can take days to complete when your block plane becomes dull every 20 minutes.
A sidenote on scarfing plywood:
Two words: Power planer and 9" angle grinder. Don't waste your block plane iron on hellacious plywood. Finish the scarf off with the grinder.
