Rub Rails

 Rub Rails:

I decided to use blue gum hardwood with the lighter colored hoop pine laminated in-between for the rub rails. But, 18mm thick blue gum will not bend easily around the forward section of the hull without breaking and it would require too many hours in my homemade steamer to soften up enough to make the bend. Also I only had enough stock to complete the rub rails and couldn't afford any breakages.......Sooooo, I decided to halve each section to 9mm thick and laminate them in place. This required a lot more labor (A total of 6 laminations per side), but the thinner timbers bent easily and smoothly around the hull, and I think the laminations will look nice.

Time to make some dust and mill up some blue gum hardwood floorboards and hoop pine into 9mm strips.

Time to turn floorboard planks from this........

Into this..........

The rub rails needed to be 5m long, the floorboards were not long enough and required scarfing.

 A 90mm cut gave a one in ten scarf.

The scarfed sections are glued and held in place with clamps alongside a large aluminum straight edge. 

A port view of the first 9mm blue gum laminate temporarily screwed and glued in place.

After the second blue gum laminate it was time for the contrasting hoop pine laminates. Again, I milled the hoop pine into 9mm thickness to smoothly bend without any risk of breaking.

Fortunately, the hoop pine lengths I had in stock were long enough and did not require scarfing.

After the second hoop pine laminate it was time for the last of the blue gum laminates.

This bow view shows the 5th blue gum laminate, one more to go.

I'm not sure if I will leave the very front nose section as shown in the pic with the laminates overlapping to a point or cut it off square along the front as per the plan.

(after all its covered up by the bowsprit)

I'll have to sleep on this one.

This pic shows the six, 9mm laminates finally glued in place.

And here is the port side cleaned up.

 Firstly, I used a belt sander with 80 grit sandpaper to clean up the epoxy squeeze and level down the laminates.

Then I rounded the aft end to a smooth curve into the aft hull side.

A curve was routed along the top edge of the entire length prior to sanding smooth with an orbital sander using 240 grit.

I have to admit this was a very labor-intensive way of installing the rub rails, however the finish product speaks for itself. Using 9mm thick laminates prevented any breakage or splintering of the hardwood when bending around the bow section.

After removing the screws, I plugged all the holes.