We had a bit of a learning curve with the scarfs. I built a scarfing jig, but the chine logs turned out a little too wide to fit. I wound up attempting a 2:1 lenght:thickness ration on them; no way! they popped apart as soon as they were bent to the molds. One of the jig-cut shear clamp scarfs failed due to a sloppy glue job. For round two, I tried a lap joint. After the epoxy had set I realized they would fail by splitting at the corner of the lap, and when I bent them to the molds they did. Finally, I decided to do it right. I reworked the jig to yeild 8:1 ratio and widened it to handle the chine logs. Next I developed an improved epoxying strategy; Basically make lots of reference marks where the correct position is before slathering with epoxy and use a clamp on the joint. Now I know how to make a long bendy piece of wood.

Above is the stem (or maybe the apron) with the chine log and shear clamp let into it. It's made from a treated yellow pine 4x4 out of the scrap pile.

Fitting all this together was tricky. I'm not sure excatly how we did it, now that it's all over. I recall my head hurting from confusion over the geometry (until I realized the front face of the stem and everything should be constant width (duh!)), drifting from the plans abit in terms of angle from vertical, and mostly just willing it all to go together until it did.

Positioning the transom turned out to be a rather mystical experience, from which I emerged none the wiser. In this shot the transom is being test fit to the chine logs and shear clamps which are tied roughly in position. This allowd the logs, clamps, and sons to be quicky fit to the transom.

Thank you, my lovely bevel guage!