All right, the second step in the actual construction of the boat is done. The first step was lofting the plans from the offsets, but since I did that before I started the blog, I'll cover it later.
The strong-back is basically the platform on which the boat is built. It's a long, flat, sturdy beam of wood. Mine is made from two sheets of 3/4" particle board and is 16 feet long by 1 foot wide and is 24" off the ground. I could have made it taller, but with the canoe being about 24" off the top of the strong-back, I figured that would be plenty tall for me (at only 5' 7" on a good day) to be able to look down on the top of it and still have some leverage for sanding, etc. It's sturdy enough for me to get up on it and walk up and down it a couple of times and heavy enough that I was able to stand on almost the very end without budging it.
I wasn't paying attention to the doofus at Lowe's who cut the particle board for me. I had asked for six equal 8" strips from the 4' x 8' sheet, so he should have set the fence for the saw at 7 7/8" to keep them all equal. Instead, he set it at 8", leaving me with one strip that was only about 7" wide. Because I forgot to use the narrower strip in a certain part of the strong-back, I had to go back and buy a third sheet of particle board. It wasn't all bad though, because I was able to use part of the extra sheet to build the top for a work-bench, which I've been needing.
The white strip down the center is spray-paint. I tied a piece of string to screws in either end of the strong-back and spray-painted over it to leave a blank center line. This makes a straighter line than using a yardstick over and over and is more reliable than a chalk-line, which can actually bow out up to an inch when you snap it.
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