The plan this weekend was to glue & screw the inwales in place. I got to work finally on late Saturday afternoon. I was able to cut and fit the port side okay, but the starboard piece broke in two places as I was bending it to fit.
Ugh.
I kind of gave up on the boat for the weekend. We went hiking in Greenbelt Park with the dogs on Sunday. It was great fun.
So then my plan was to cut and glue scarf joints in the starboard inwale, in the basement workshop during the week. My first attempt was comically bad. Neither joint was long enough, given how I overlapped the pieces 5″, figuring 5/8″-thick material and a 1:8 angle gives a 5″ joint. But cutting diagonally across the pieces overlapped by 5″ only gave me a 2-1/2″ joint. The glued joint toward the bow end wasn’t too, too terrible, but the one toward the stern was quite possibly the worst scarf joint ever (WSJE).
So I cut out the WSJE and tried again, making sure to measure a full 5″ on each piece. Then I tried all sorts of ways to align the plain (not nibbed) scarf joint and devise a clamping method. I tried sister pieces and pencil marks and blue painter’s tape, but I never did find a satisfying solution.
So I just finally gave up on the broken piece. I cannibalized the piece destined for chines instead.
Lesson 1: Watch out for knots!
The inwale broke at two points where there were knots. I’d had another piece break the same way when I was planing it. I should have considered how and where there were knots when I was determining which pieces were to be what, whether gunwale or inwale or chine or keel or rails.