I got started with some woodwork, with an eye towards preparing the boards for the coamings/cabin trunk assemblies.

Through some sort of miscommunication, the hardwood supplier had sent me a single thick board of the length and width I'd requested for the coaming boards, though I'd specified 4/4.    There was enough wood in the thicker board for both coamings, but it needed to be resawn in half, through its thickness.

The wood arrived right before Christmas last year, and I stored it away and paid it little heed at the time, telling myself I'd take it somewhere and get it resawn.  Of course that event never occurred, between a lack of time to try, a lack of available or known local resawyers, and other factors, including the fact that the last time I had wood resawn it took weeks and provided less than ideal end results, and I found myself ready for the board now.  I thought I could resaw it in the shop somehow and then plane the cut face smooth.  The original supplier of the wood was 2 hours away, and, though I should have dealt with the unspecified wood delivery at the onset, by now it was too late for that.  Being a stubbornly independent Yankee has its drawbacks sometimes.

First, I needed to roughly size the piece.  It was far too long, so using yesterday's on-boat measurements as a guide, with confirmation from the actual cardboard templates of the cabin trunk/coamings that I'd made in November, I determined how much I could cut off the end of the board, and then made the cut.  This reduced the length from an impossible-to-manage 16+ feet to an only-challenging-to-manage 12+ feet.  I also straightened one side of the board, a long process since I didn't have a straightedge long enough to do it in one fell swoop and had to use a shorter metal rule that I repositioned frequently.

In any event, eventually I was ready to begin the resaw.  First, I ran the board through my table saw on each edge, creating a cut 3" deep in each edge of the wood (and on its thickness centerline).  With these guide cuts, there remained about 6" of material in the center of the board still to cut; I thought I could use a Sawz-All with a long blade, and guided by the existing cuts, to make relatively short work of this remains, albeit with great care.  But the two styles of long blades that I had didn't work well at all, barely cutting through the wood.  I made it about 16" from one end, after trying both blade types, new blades, old blades, and even some old (and of course dull) hand saws that I had before I gave up and ordered new, more aggressive blades for my saw, as well as a new and aggressive hand saw.  I determined to give my ridiculous process one more admittedly stubborn try when the new tools arrived, but I wouldn't spend too much more futile time on it if the new blades didn't work.

While the fiberglass cured and I awaited the new tools' arrival tomorrow, I worked on another boat in the shop.

Total Time on This Job Today:  5.75 hours

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