Outwales, Inwales, and Dyed Seats on Annapolis Wherry

For the past few days I have been tinkering on the outwales, spacered inwales, and the seats/thwarts. 

At the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival this year, I saw another Annapolis Wherry that had a lovely bow treatment along the outwales at the bow. Instead of ending the outwales near the bow, this builder brought the inwales all the way around the bow. I'm trying to do the same thing, although I think that other builder is a better woodworker than I am, based on how it looks so far! 

I used screws to temporarily hold the assembly in place while the epoxy cures. They have now been removed. 

The assembly is made up of cutoffs from the inwales and outwales. I screwed up on one side but luckily had enough cutoffs to make another one. The center accent strip is Alaskan yellow cedar.

It will look a lot better once it has been shaped. I'll do that after all the inwales and outwales have been installed. 

I've also now epoxied on the first two outwales, one on port and one on starboard. There will be another layer on each side. 

I can only do one side at a time because that's all the clamps I have!

The manual says to do both outwale rails at the same time, but I prefer to do one rail at a time. It allows for more precision. It's also just easier while working solo. Yes, it takes a few more days, but who cares. 

I've begun working on the spacered inwales too. More on that in a future post. 

Finally, I've also been working on the seats and thwarts. My wife wanted them to be dyed, so I used a "Vintage Cherry" dye from General Finishes. It looks good. 

Here they are after being dyed and just drying in place. They are not epoxied in yet. That will come much later in the build. But you can at least get a sense of the nice color.

The dye is very fragile and can easily be scratched which is super noticeable, so once they are completely dry (I waited until the next day) they must be epoxy coated a few times. 

Here's the bow seat after being dyed and epoxy coated. It will get a light sanding to knock down the fuzzies and then two more coats of epoxy. I water popped the wood prior to dying and then sanded it, but the epoxy brought up more fuzzies regardless. Sigh...

Stay tuned!