I finished the bead and cove strips and prepped the board to put on the top sheet. This was a fairly easy part. Using the handplane first and finishing with a sanding block and 60 grit sand paper I was able to get a flat consistent surface throughout. I was a little unsure how far up to run the bead and cove strips, so I probably went too far. This is obvious near the tip and tail where there is a huge surface to glue to, and a lot of material that was stripped off.

Something that is probably obvious to many, but not to me, was than in planing the rail to feather onto the frame the line of the rail should be tangent where it meets the frame. I began trying to make the surface horizontal and at first had a great feathered edge until I stepped back and looked at it and realized gluing the top planks like this would leave a small valley beneath. It should basically gently roll outwards. I dry fit the top planks to see if they fit and everything looked good. I was definitely more careful with the hand plane this time, only making a pass or two before stepping back to eyeball the lines.

Lastly, I will be out of town for a week and was hoping to glue the top planks before I left. Unfortunately, I haven't chosen a fin set-up yet and thus couldn't glue the fin blocks in place. It will have to wait until I get back. I talked to a guy down at Doheny Board shop about fish shapes and fins and I may be leaning more towards making this a twinnie rather than a quad. FCS makes an awesome Fish keel wood fin that I think would look great.

Back in a week...