Back on track

Today I spent the day shaping my new tail blocks and nose block. I'm really happy with how both turned out.


For the nose block, I first glued in some backing blocks in empty space and let those set. I decided to use redwood. It's light, has some great grain patterns, and I thought it would look cool. I quickly learned that it is fairly fragile. It chips and breaks a lot, so you would not want to build an entire board out of it (I think they build canoe's out of redwood though, I wonder how that goes?) I then cut off the front of the nose and glued another block onto the front. I decided to do this before gluing the top plank on. You will be able to see the nose block from the bottom of the board, but it will look solid from the top. Seemed cool to me. The picture at the left is the sanded and roughly shaped new nose.


The tail blocks took a little more work. I took a big piece of redwood (it was actually a stairway support for a deck because it was cheap) and traced the old blocks. I cut them out and then tried to fit them into place. I read the post from Brad and the blocks just didn't seem to fit. If I trimmed the top, then the ends of the blocks didn't extend to the outside of the chine log. It was as if the radius of the curvature was tooshort. Anyways, after cutting out the replacement pieces I threw those out too.

To finally fit the shape, I looked through the gallery on the grain surfboards site to eyeball the curve. I then measured 2 inches from where the last frame met the keel. I put down a piece of paper, busted out the compass and drew a nice curve. I took this, cut it out and traced it onto the redwood. I have no idea if this is remotely the shape the tail should be, but it looks good. I glued the new block into place and cut it down to size (much more carefully than the first). If you compare it to picture of the Wherry on Grain's site, I think they are comparable. Plus, the redwood should look pretty cool sandwiched between the cedar planks. This solved the 5200 gluing problem, the miss-shaped tailblock problem, and the railing problem in the tail. The sliver of missing plank is still going to hit a bit, but I think I'll take Brad's advice and make a matching insert for both sides so it looks like a construction detail rather than a mistake.

As a side note, it may look like the tailblocks are asymetrical. They are, kind of. I eyeballed the straight cuts on the outer edges that sit inside the board. I measured and the curves are symetrical and the tips of the board are each 5.5" from center, and the board is now the prescribed 6'4". It is just the innards that are a little off. It shouldn't matter, but if the board favors rights over lefts I'll be sure to own up to it on the site :)