freedom

With the stems finished I had to touch up the strips prior to the final shaping of the hull. There were two things I wanted to do.

Over a period of a couple of weeks I hit the board hard finished the stripping. Once I rounded the bilge the stripping went pretty fast.

I decided to put some accent strips on the Freedom. For this, I am using a thick band of American walnut with thin strips of Alaskan yellow cedar on either side of the walnut.

With the stems shaped and everything in place, it’s time to start stripping the boat. The Freedom looks like it is quite a straight-forward shape to build and I’ve decided to try out some different techniques for this part of the building process.

I finished steam bending the stems for the Freedom 15. It was really easy. I grabbed our kitchen kettle and taped down the on switch to keep the kettle boiling.

Okay, now that the Pygmy Tern 14 is complete, I’m starting on my new project. I’ve decided to build a wood strip canoe.