Front and back attached

Tonight I glassed in both the transom and the bow stem.  The transom was made up from two laminated 1/4" sheets.  The bow stem was cut out of a 1-1/4" solid mahogany.  Again, this material was chosen for some level of rot resistance.  The place that I bought the Hydrotek plywood (Homestead Hardwood near Sandusky Ohio), had an incredible selection of hardwoods.  Actually the left-over pieces of Mahogany will make some nice woodworking projects.  

Cutting the angles on the bow stem created a challenge.  The plans show only the front of the piece with a shape tapering from 2" wide at the top to 0" at the bottom.  However of course the back has different dimensions due to the hull taper.  The Watershed people did indicate the appropriate angles on the Tyvek paterns that they sent to me (23 deg at the top and 20 deg at the bottom), but getting the bow stem shaped with a varying angles was a bit of a daunting.  Ultimately, I created a simple jig that allowed me to rip a 3" X 27-5/8" board with a 2% angle in the long direction and a 23 deg taper.  I then used a Stanley Sureform planer to "twist" the angle of the taper to 20 degrees at the bottom.


Gluing in the bow stem wasn't that hard.  After wetting out the hull panels and edges of the bow-stem with a West System (105/207) epoxy mixture, and then applying a peanut butter consistency mixture thickened with 403 filler, I simply held the bow stem in place, drilled some small holes through the side panels into the mahogany, and used small brass screws to hold it all in place.  This was much easier than trying to use clamps.