Bitts & Pieces

I’ve been working on a few things simultaneously over the holiday break. I’ll have more updates soon on the rudder and transom. But I’ve also been catching up on some of the miscellany of bitts and rails and other items. As always, everything ties together – so using a thicker deck and increasing the bulwarks affected the roll of top rail that sweeps into the waist. Instead of trying to match it to the plans, or even match it identically to the original plans or other sources, I instead took what the build gave me and worked with that.

I used a solid piece of cedar scrap to draw out what the rail would look like, then carved/sanded the pieces to fit. Admittedly, I’m not much of a wood carver, so my little bit of saving grace is that it’ll all be painted black so my inevitable flaws will hopefully be covered.

The the strips along the wales and railings have some decorative elements to them – so in order to achieve that I sanded down some carving tools to create a few different scrapers. The strips themselves are boxwood – split down the middle, sanded even, then carved and painted before mounting.