
The shearwater will be my first non-laminated, inner and outer curved keel. These have to match perfectly and I didn’t love the idea of cutting one and then scribing the line onto the other and then praying that I could follow that same line to within a 64th. So here I am doing an experiment to see if I can follow a curve of 1/4 inch per foot with a battery powered circular saw set to full depth. Basically, the idea here is that the piece of wood from the bottom of the cut can mate up with the piece of wood at the top of the cut to give me a perfect fit. (If they were the same wood species, I could just use one board and set the saw a lot shallower, which would follow the curve better.) It definitely complained a bit on the test but it got the job done with an extremely dull blade, so I think we’re good to go. I’ll probably do one more test before slicing into my good mahogany. If anyone has a better way of doing this, please let me know!
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