The Gunwales



Dry fitting the Inwales

Now it is time to make the Inwales & the Outwales. These are the rails that run the full length of the boat on the inside and the outside. They give the very thin piece of plywood a lot of strength. They are easy to make, I simply cut them on the table saw out of a 1” X 8” X 16’ board of mahogany. I found a couple of knots but I will place them in a position that will hide them and hopefully they will not affect the strength of the wood too much.

For the outwales, I ran over them with a 1\4” round over bit in my router to take the edge off them. The inwales were not rounded over as I still have to fit the seat doubler (bracket) to them. Next the process of fitting them in to the boat, I worked with the natural bend in the wood and started fit the inwales. Then I found an error…… I had cut out the notch in the bulkheads ¾” X 3/3” and the inwales are ¾” X 1” so I had to cut it an extra ¼” deeper. This would be easy if I could lay it on the bench but it is already epoxied in place so it was rather tricky. I spent about 30minutes on each notch but I was happy with them all when I finished.

The ends of the inwales have to be cut on a complex angle so that they match up nicely at the front of the boat this also meant lots of filing and sanding to get the fit just right. But I was very happy with the result in the end.

Dry fitting the Outwales on the Sasafrass 16