The second inwhale went on the same as the first. No surprises there. Even better than that, it lined up exactly the same. You can see at the bow and stern where I chose to end the gunwhales short of the stems and rounded them over. I decided I wanted to make the decks flush with gunwhales so I’ve cut away the material there to allow for it. Having the inwhales end short leaves me space to install the painter rings in the deck and have the full deck thickness.
Here’s the setup I used to determine the angle of the tumblehome at the shear line. Because the inwhales follow the hull and the tumblehome is curving in (the definition of tumblehome…), the bottom of the inwhale isn’t level. So the thwart needs to have bevels relieved into its ends to mate snugly.
Using the measurements from the jig, I made up a temporary centre thwart and two seat spacers. These are sized as their future counterparts so that the canoe will have the right shape as the outwhales are installed. A tremendous amount of pressure is exerted by bending the gunwhales on. Not having the internal support here would allow the outwhales to crush the hull inwards signifcantly. The result would be a canoe that is much skinnier and has tons more rocker than intended.
With the support braces in, the outwhales got their epoxy and got bent on. Being solid and thicker it was much more work to bend them than it was for the inwhales. The first one went on without incident.
On the second one, three clamps from the end disaster struck. I was tightening the vertical clamp across the bow to pull up the outwhale when it let out a loud crack. With the entire thing covered in wet epoxy (just look at those drips !) and 41 clamps already set there wasn’t much to be done. I hadn’t machined a spare outwhale anyway. The ones I did make are bookmatched from the same piece so putting on an entirely different one wouldn’t match at all. So I clamped up the rest and I’ll have to cut out that break and install a patch later on.
Not even close to hitting the water and it already has a repair to be done.
