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Stonefly Build


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Here are the pics up to date for my Stonefly build.  Frames are 1/2" baltic birch stained black walnut.  Stringers, gunwales and keel are western red cedar.  Thwarts and breast-hooks are black walnut...

 

Day 1 framing:

day1.jpg

 

Doing the gunwales I had almost every clamp I own on the boat:

lots_clamps.jpg

 

Frame ready for thwarts and breasthooks:

frame_90.jpg

 

Thwarts are cut, sanded and first coat of oil applied:

thwarts.jpg

 

Bow breasthook, took this outside and it kind of haloed.  Will have to retake on a nicer day with the good camera:

breasthook.jpg

 

I don't know why my camera phone keeps ghosting when doing these outdoor shots...FOG:

fog1.jpg

 

fog2.jpg

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Just got Jeff's 2nd book and read about attaching the fabric to the bow and stern if using the protective metal bands, man, now there is no sewing on this boat...I almost feel cheated.  :)

 

Just waiting on the staples to arrive, tracking says Friday.  That and applying as many coats of oil between now and then as possible.

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Scored a set of canvas pliers at the local arts store down-town, $10, so couldn't argue with that.

 

Cut and carved my greenland paddle today, total cost was $2.50 for a douglas fir stud...so even if it doesn't hold up it was a good prototype build:

paddle.jpg

 

Got a better picture of the breasthooks after putting on the first coat of varnish today:

breasthook_bow.jpg

breasthook_stern.jpg

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I started cutting the floor boards Thursday evening.  To get the BB ply home in the new mini-van I had to have the lumber place rip the 5'x5' sheets down to 5'x4', which left me two piece of 1'x5'.  These I cut in half and then decided to cut a taper on so they could be placed side-by-side and I would get a 10' long floor in the boat.

 

So I calculated the taper, set my angle gauge and pushed the 1st piece through the saw, just as it was nearing the end of the cut there was a loud bang, I was left holding the main piece of the floor in my left hand and my right arm was in serious pain.  I shut the saw down and looked at my right arm, at the wrist there was copious amounts of red fluid running down my hand and the wrist had a big distortion in it.  I am a part-time EMT for a local ski patrol so I am used to these kinds of things (just not necessarily on me).  So I wrapped the arm up in a towel and scrap piece of wood for a splint, called my wife who had just left to do errands to come back and pick me up, shut down the rest of the equipment, found the angle gauge had shot 30' back to the far wall of the shop, the piece of ply that had gotten wedged between the blade and angle gauge has bounced off the front of the canoe and shot off to the side and embedded itself in a spare piece of drywall sheeting. 

 

The canoe is fine, I had clamped a piece of metal to the bow frame to pre-bend it so that acted as armor when it got hit.

 

Sent the kids across the street to play and we went to immediate care for x-rays.  Fortunately nothing was broken and no foreign material was in there, just a really deep and bad bruise with a puncture wound and a hematoma (large pooling of blood between the muscle and skin).  They flushed it and wrapped it up and gave me a wrist brace.  It has been 36 hours, large amounts of Advil and ice, and I am just now regaining limited use of my hand with small twinges of pain, expect to be 2-3 weeks before I have full strength and range of motion back..

 

Here is the angle gauge, you can see the two cuts where it hit the blade, note the one is on TOP of the gauge so somehow this thing twisted, hit the blade on the side and then continued to twist 180 degrees so the blade caught it on the top as well and drove it back into my arm.  I still have not found the metal stop that was screwed into the rail to hold the piece of wood in place.

 

Lessons for me, no more metal gauges on the saw except where these is no choice.  I was paying 100% attention to the cut and still this accident happened so never take things for granted, even though I have been using table saws for 20+ years and made thousands of cuts, it only takes one to give you a bad day.

 

angle_gauge.jpg

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Glad it wasn't worse. I have one table saw accident and one on the bandsaw. Just like you said, BANG and you going what happened?  If you are anything like me  your going to ponder on what happened. And if you come up with a good guess let us know. Sounds like the plywood somehow got on top of blade but I am am having trouble visulizing how it happened.

 

My acciden was a small sliver of cedar from a scarf cut that was kicked back and mangled my thumb. Probably weighted an ounce but the forces are so great it still did me in.

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I dunno what happened, but looking at the cut-off piece it does look like it got on top of the blade on the edge, the corner is all mangled and the layers are split.

 

My only other accident involved a Lancelot carving disc which is literally a chain-saw blade on a 3" wheel that goes on right-angle grinder.  I was carving a chair seat when it kicked, cut through the leather gloves I was wearing and cut into my pinky, mangled that one up pretty good too.  I switched to a safer carving disc after that.

 

Needless to say, the other 3 pieces of plywood I marked, rough-cut on the bandsaw and will use an edging bit with roller guide on the router to flush cut the edges to the first piece...still have to go back on the TS to cut them down to strips but straight cuts seem safer than angle cuts :)

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One thing about the TS, getting lifted with the back of the teeth is about the only way things go wrong. But sometimes you never know how that comes about because it  happens to quickly. One thing I have always heard and starting to question, is the wisdom of the blade height just about the cut. The more I look at it, I am thinking it make kickbacks happen faster and leaves no time to stop a board lifting up. A couple of times I have seen it happen and blade was set "too high" and managed to stop the cut before the board lifted.

 

Bandsaws are great about not kicking back but they cut off a finger just as fast. I sliced open a finger a few weeks ago on mine. Good thing was I cut the nerves to so it didn't hurt much. ;)

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Angled cuts on a tablesaw always scare me. Worked with an old boy who would cove on them by running a fence diagonally to the blade, and running the board over the blade...

 

I've been slowly retreating from power tools. I tempted fate for 20 years, knock wood.

 

My one brush was a hypoid saw kicking back while cutting a curve for a skateboard ramp. One place where you for sure want the blade just peeking through is cutting curves with a round blade.

 

For what it's worth, an old mentor of mine used to put the blade way up on the tablesaw. Said it cut truer and better... Different skins, different stitches, eh?

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I have no problem running the board across the blade, so long as you only raise it a little bit each time, never had a problem.  It's the whole wedging an angle gauge between the fence and blade while trying to push everything through parallel at the same time that makes me go hmmmm and this time it got me.

 

My best friend did take the tip of his middle finger off on his table saw and my father-in-law cut through his thumb on his.  An old cabinet maker friend of mine went 40 years accident free before losing a finger.  When I used to shop at the Rockler store in Buffalo I don't think any of the employees had all their digits...

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Hello, my name is Rich and it's been 9 days since my last table saw accident...so my wrist is back to about 95%.  I can move it around without pain but I don't have full range of motion yet.  Can also still feel a mass under the skin where the muscle was crushed/bruised.  Not getting back to push-ups and pull-ups this week either.

 

So I got back in the shop today and put together the floor for the front half of the boat.  This is the floor upside down, those brackets will rest on top of the keel.  I keep debating whether to glue, screw or lash them to the keel.  The brackets are sized so that the edges of the floor will rest on the frames so still have plenty of outer edge contact and support.

 

This will give me a level floor in the boat.  My only concern is forward/backwards lateral strength, but since it will have 9 of those brackets over 10' of floor, it will take a lot of force to break all those glue joints at once.

floor_upside_down.jpg

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