As I mentioned in a previous post, my first attempt at building the stem did not turn out quite right. When I started cutting the notches for the stringers, I initially used the same approach that had worked on the frames: removing enough material so that one side of the stringer sat flush with the frame while the opposite side was buried deeper, allowing the hull's curvature to develop naturally. The new stem! The problem became obvious near the lower part of the stem. Because the stem narrows considerably towards the bottom, I found myself removing large amounts of material to achieve the correct geometry. The more I worked, the more concerned I became about weakening what is already one of the most critical structural components of the boat. To make matters worse, my notch-cutting technique was still evolving at that stage, and the additional twisting forces generated by the stringers made achieving clean, accurate notches even more difficult. The old stem was a mess! After disc...