Building the stringers

With all the frames and the stem reasonably aligned on the strongback, it was finally time to move on to the stringers.

First glimpe of the hull curves

The first obstacle appeared immediately: my boards are about 4.88 m long, and the yard’s table saw simply doesn’t have the infeed and outfeed space to handle pieces of that length. I could have cut the boards in half, but that would mean adding extra scarf joints — something I preferred to avoid whenever possible.

After discussing it with the yard crew, I followed their suggestion. They lent me a circular saw and I ripped the strips manually, intentionally leaving a very generous margin — up to 2 cm. Over such long cuts perfection is unrealistic, so the idea was to cut safely oversized and correct later.

Cutting strips using a circular saw - hard work!

I experimented with a straight-cutting jig, but the added friction actually made the operation harder and less controllable. In the end, the best method was simply following a marked line and keeping the saw steady for the entire length.

Uneven strips

The result looked terrible — wavy, uneven strips everywhere — but then came the “magic”. With their help, I ran each piece through the jointer to establish a true reference edge, and then through the thickness planer to bring every strip to the exact width and thickness. Those ugly cuts suddenly became perfectly dimensioned stock.

Establish straight edge using the jointer planer

Adjust width with thickness planer

Perfect dimensions!

Next came the scarf joints. The plans specify a 1:10 ratio, which in my case meant a 22 cm bevel for 22 mm thick stringers. I built a jig from scrap MDF with pine blocks to hold the pieces at the correct angle. Using the table saw, I cut most of the bevel; the 7 cm wide stringers were just beyond the blade’s full reach, so I finished the last bit carefully with a hand saw guided by the kerf left by the blade.

Testing the scarf joint jig

The scarf joints

A small warning here: estimating how many strips you need is trickier than it seems. Every scarf joint removes at least 22 cm of effective length — you can’t glue a 4.88 m piece to a 1 m piece and expect 5.88 m. You’ll always lose the overlap length, often a bit more after trimming. Planning for an extra 40–50 cm per stringer is a safe margin.

With all parts prepared, gluing was straightforward: thickened epoxy and plenty of clamps. Since I don’t own many clamps, I spread the work over several days. There are methods to glue everything at once using auxiliary battens, but I wasn’t in a hurry.

Glue up...

... clamp and wait

The following day, I cleaned the joints using rasp, file, and sander to remove squeeze-out and fair the transitions. The result was a set of long, continuous stringers ready for installation.

I clamped one of the 30 mm stringers along the frames and immediately got my first real glimpse of the hull’s curves — a very satisfying moment. It also revealed something important: the force needed to bend the stringers against the frames is significant, and the strongback must be absolutely rigid.

Testing the 3cm stringers

So that becomes the next task — reinforcing the strongback and frames before starting the full dry-fit of the stringers. More soon.