Dan built this "Coastal" and early version of the "Guillemot"
Alaska Yellow Cedar and Padouk. I milled the cove and bead strips to 5/8 wide and about 3/16 thick as I knew the bending for these curves to be
pretty tight. This size worked out quite well. Since I did not use
staples, the glue-up took a while as I could only glue-up a few strips per
day, but it was worth it in the long run. One other advantage to the narrow
strips was that less material was removes to achieve the final shape and
therefore there were no too thin or too thick sections in the wood.
One surprise on the Padouk: Fortunately I decided to do a seal coat of
epoxy before applying the glass. The epoxy drew color from the Padouk and I
had red streaks bleeding all over the yellow cedar. This was a bit of a
pain to re-scrape all the red off the yellow cedar, but then with careful
edge painting and separate re-applications of the epoxy along each line,
that stopped the bleeding. Live and learn!
I ordered the yellow cedar sight unseen. I asked that one of the boards be
18ft long so that I would not have to do too many scarf joints. When I went
to pick up the lumber I got "one long board"! It was 23 feet long 12/4
thick and 18" to 24" wide! I had to cut into 3 lengths to get it home!!!!
So much for long strips without scarf joints. ;-( I guess one has to be
careful of what one asks for.
