A long time drying

Here is the second Gunnel all clamped up. The first is already installed and stayed clamped for 3 days because I wanted to be sure the glue had cured. The temps are around 60 deg in the basement and like I said, I wanted the glue to be fully cured because the wood is both bent and twisted and has quite a bit of stress on it. Notice also the front deck has been beveled and faired along the edges. The rear deck still only has a few screws holding it on.

Here is a shot of the already installed gunnel. I used a couple of nice 3/8" x 2" (true) trim pieces picked up on sale. They are 8 ft long and just manage to slip under the front and rear decks. With the outside rail and the thickness of the side panel ply, total thickness is 1" of stressed and laminated sheer. I can't get it to flex at all and there is very minimal twistability even with only one frame and no thwarts of any kind to impart torsional stiffness. Once I build in the mast thwart and put gussets on it, and enclose the rear flotation box, I should get no twisting at all. I am debating enclosing the front area totally, but I still might. I will not be cutting the boat in two as originally planned. I will leave that for when I make a ClamCanu, later on this year. I went ahead and measured back 2 ft from the very tip of the stem and marked each side. I then measured from each back corner to the mark on the opposite side panel. The boat is less than 1/32" off from perfect square!! Hats off to the Carene software for plotting such accurate panels.

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