Improving straightness of scarf glueups

[Hal Hammond]

Working on Ravenswood Standard frame now after finishing my wife’s LV.

 

Once you  have the frames prepped and stringers scarfed, it goes pretty quick. The most frustrating  part was finding decent, knot-free cedar. Typically my stringers ended up with 2-3 scarfs and I often had to cut them apart and reglue because of hard spots, or small kinks. If the stringers are kinked, you won’t get a fair curve when you assemble the frog.

 

Heres an example along with my solution (middle of three). The trick is to clamp the scarfs against a long piece of steel or aluminum angle. Once I started doing this, ALL my glueups have been straight.

 

Give it a try if you’re struggling to get straight stringers with multiple scarfs.

HH

 

 

 

 

[andy00]

Cousin Hal:

Good idea! Similarly, I have knocked together clamping jigs of 1X4's, 2X2's, and 2X4's. These have been used for gluing scarf joints and butt-block joints. Wax paper or plastic sheet (shopping bags) are needed to avoid gluing the work to the jigs. The metal angles that you used have the advantage of greater length. Make sure to keep us informed of your progress. 

Fair winds, Andy 

 

[Hal Hammond]

Thanks for the feedback!

 

I started with something similar but they were a little too short to insure that the stringers would stay straight. I used news paper around the glue joints. Cheap, planes off easily when you clean up the glue line.