Saturday, June 8, 2013

From oar design to wood

Time to start cutting blanks. I followed the general layout shown by Jim Michalak, centering the longer piece that would form the center and drawing the two shorter blanks at mirror ends.


I cut out the center first and decided the fit the hard wood tips before gluing the blanks together. I added a decorative curve, clamped the pine blank and scrap red oak together and them simultaneously with a heavy scroll saw blade so they'd be a good fit. I mixed up a bit of epoxy thickened with oak saw dust and fit into the blades. The results are below. 
 After cutting the blanks on a bandsaw, I carefully aligned the pieces together and drilled a hole for a finish nail in the tripled part of the blade and in the loop that that would keep everything aligned after the glue was applied and clamped. I was low on epoxy, so used Elmer's waterproof wood glue--which I've found works fine as long as the wood doesn't become saturated with water and there's no serious loads. After the glue set, I marked and cut out the taper and handles using bandsaw. The completed oar blanks are below ready for rounding.  

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