Step #6 – Making the Cut (Round 2)

I'm sure by now everyone is sick of reading about me cutting plywood.  Trust me, I too am anxious to finally begin assembling this boat.  These sets of cuts are essential for our skiff, however.  Without them, we would have no place to sit!  For the most part, these were straight or angled cuts we could quickly do on the table saw.  I’ll use the diagrams below to illustrate what I’m cutting...and then after this, I will not post anything on cutting plywood for a while...I promise.

The bow seat and knee

This is the part that sits at the front (or bow) of the boat.  I don’t think our bow seat will actually act as a seat on our skiff (unless we want to sink our hard work and effort). 

The bow seat is the triangle shaped piece, below it is the bow knee (Photo courtesy of http://unclejohns.com/)

The knee was cut on the table saw, while we had to cut the seat with a jig saw.  In the photos below, you can see that our seat is actually a rounded trapezoid.

Drawing the bow seat

Cutting the bow seat with a jig saw

Our bow seat! Thankfully, my steady hands did not fail me. 

The other seats and knees

Next, we cut four boards for our two seats and two knees.  Uncle John does a great job of showing how these pieces will fit into our boat below:

Photo courtesy of http://unclejohns.com/

Once we had all of our pieces, we glued strips of wood along the edges to sturdy our seats.

Our strips of wood were glued, and then clamped down securely while the glue dried.