Battens

 08 Feb 22:

Battens, not the kind you might think, are required today. These battens are long thin strips of wood used to find fair lines on a boat building mold. We had to make them, so we went to get a 12 feet long piece of spruce with Skipper's Subaru named SUPER GUMBY. We bought this car primarily for the All Wheel Drive and turbo charged towing capacity, but it also has a cool roof rack that folds out of the slipstream when not in use.

We rolled out the DeWALT table saw and cut strips from the spruce, some too big, some too small, until we found the Goldilocks batten.

Spruce may have been too soft, as it likes to split, and this spruce had a lot of little tight knots that caused several strips to break. But we got enough to do the trick. These battens are used to find where the inside face of the next plank will lay, and from there we can figure how much to bevel off the edge of the adjoining plank.