It was made from a single piece of mahogany, re-sawed into strips (the same as the planks*), and shaped with a bandsaw. I used the Sparkman & Stephens plans as a guide, rather than the boat itself. I'd rather adjust the boat to the patch than the other way around.
I haven't staggered the ends yet to fit into the ladder (which is almost finished and will appear in an upcoming post), nor have I planed or sanded the sides. I also haven't glued them together in the curve they will need to follow. This photo just shows the flat pieces stacked up on top of each other in the reverse order that they will go in the boat. Below is a photo showing how the pieces were sketched out one by one. They had to be designed to taper quicker toward the bow and more gradually toward the center of the boat, to match the shape of the hull. The S&S plans don't specify how to do this. They just show the thickness of the keelson, it's width at the top, and the angle of the hull at various stations from bow to stern. I presume that sorting out the remaining details was left to the builder. I am still trying to figure some of them out even as I write this, and I can foresee all sorts of ways that I could seriously and completely foul this up.
*I used a different, much cheaper bandsaw blade on these pieces. It was a Wood Slicer, available from Highland Woodworking. It costs a third of the Lennox carbide-tipped blade I used, but it produces fewer deep saw marks than the Lennox Tri-Master. Highland sells both the Wood Slicer and the Lennox. I got the Lennox because it was billed to last a long time. One of my shop mates ripped a third of the teeth off the blade within a few weeks.
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