Halfway through the Rail - Rub Rail Redux

Back from St. Croix, I don't think I can ever tire of boat pictures.

The marina at Christiansted.  This was the view from our hotel room.

View from Rum Runners, a famous bar/restaurant on the boardwalk.

No boats in sight still very nice.  Rainbow Beach on the west side of the island.

After allowing myself some time for reminiscing, I started work on the rub rail.  Another builder noted that it took him about a week to get all of the laminations down.  I agree with that.  One side has to go on after some bending, then the other, then the laminations.  Add curing time, sanding, prep, cursing, rearranging, and final prep, it's easily been four days for me as of today.

I first pulled all of the old screws out and redrilled a couple new ones into the lower breasthook where I embedded three stainless steel screws.  This is to give a little extra holding power near the bow in addition to the glue (thanks, Chris, for the suggestion).  I'll add similar embedded screws on each of the other laminations.  Unfortunately, all this screwing around I'm sure has affected the integrity of the rail, so it's a good thing the rub rails aren't exactly structural.  Nevertheless, I filled in each of these holes with epoxy and prepared for the second layer.  The second layer is ash, which will of course be followed by padauk.

Here a hole, there a hole, everywhere a hole, hole...

Unlike the first layer, the second layer screwed and glued pretty easily with only my body weight forcing the curve instead of my body weight plus hot water plus voodoo magick.  I didn't have to wet this area down nor form it in any way.  Like the first layer, I drilled and screwed in the first three screws without glue then added glue to the rest of the length of the strip.  I then went down the line drilling and screwing the layer in permanently until I reached the stern.

At that point, I unscrewed the first three screws at the bow, plus one other, and added glue to this section.  Once the glue was applied, I leaned in and rescrewed all of them back into the first layer.  Whew!  Since my ash strip is about 20 feet long (I started with a 10 foot board and scarfed them together, not bothering to cut to spec just yet) there was plenty of leverage available to use, which I cut away once done. 

Aft part done.  Unscrewed forward to secure this permanently.  You can see the three countersunk screws in the first layer here.

Lamination done.  I'm thinking the epoxy clean up here is going to be awful.  All those folks who volunteered to help -- yes.

View from above.  I think it looks pretty good.

I think the padauk-ash-padauk lamination will look good, but I worry about carrying a theme too far.  I remind myself that part of the reason for this is because I couldn't bring myself to buy another board of padauk.  Still, there's something to be said for committing to a design.

Test fit of the last layer.

Another view of the test fit.  I was testing the curve here.  It'll be OK.

I'm hoping this cures well enough to do the final layer on the port side tomorrow morning.  I decided to do it this way as I can more easily fit the bow area with the three layers down instead of trying to meet them up one layer at a time.  In the meantime, I'm on the hunt for tires I can use for the flip.  Yes, it's a neverending thing.