Wa'apa build - Part 2 (Plywood & side panels)

Another several days have passed, and work on the wa'apa continues slow but sure.

While deciding what to do about plywood I took care of some small things like cutting the notches for the chines.

After a few days of looking for some kind of decent ply to use, and only finding rubbish I'm not quite willing to waste my time on...I finally decided to just extend my budget a bit and get some good marine plywood. 

In all I purchased 3 sheets of 4mm and 1 sheet of 6mm okoume. Nice stuff and light weight too, totally worth it. I'll use the 4mm for hull sides, decks, and other bits and pieces. The 6mm will be for the hull bottom, and floor of self bailing cockpit I'm thinking of adding. Should be enough to go around, so long as I plan and cut carefully...

A rental truck and several hours driving later...

Wrestled out to my small work area...

With ply in hand I wasted little time getting started. I spent a good while measuring, marking, checking, fixing, etc the points for the side panel on to a sheet of 4mm. After I was certain everything was as it should be I completed marking the panel.

Finishing nails driven into the marked points.

Batten bent around and clamped to nails for tracing curve.

Side panel completely marked and ready to cut.

Several more checks of measurements and correctness and it was time to put saw to wood. A bit tricky since a full panel on the bench leaves very little room to move about.

On top of bench with pull saw..the only way..

Use block plane to carefully work down to the line.

With one side panel cut and trimmed, it was used as a pattern to trace the others, and trim them to match.

Finishing nails placed into finished panel used as pattern for others. Once positioned for tracing the nails are driven through  to the bench, holding the pieces while tracing. After new panel is cut, the nails are placed through the same holes to align and hold panels together again while the new one is planed to match.

After much sweat, 4 identical panels are cut and trimmed.

With some panels ready, I just had to temporarily fit them to bulkheads to get a small glimpse of what I'm working towards.

A look at inside. The horizontal markings indicate where cockpit floor would be.

Well, that's the progress so far. Some little things to do and then maybe get the those hulls assembled real soon...!