Chipping away

I've been working on stripping a little each day and I finally got past the midpoint. It's going a little faster using the nasty stuff and with good weather I've been able to leave the garage door open while I work. I still need to go back and do a final clean-up and strip the inner gunwales.

 I moved the canoe to the other side of the garage so I can work in the shop more easily.  I don't think I'll be parking inside for a while. I cut pieces for the bow seat frame and set up the mortising attachment on the drill press (drill square holes!!). I'm keeping the original long pieces of the frame and making new side pieces so I can mortise the frame together rather than dowel it together, like it was done originally. The dowels didn't keep the frame pieces from rolling inward with the tension of the cane. 

More Tools

My father has moved into an apartment, so we moved most of his shop tools into my garage. It took a lot of work to clear out the accumulated junk to make room for everything. So now I have a bigger tablesaw, a bandsaw, lathe, spindle sander, thickness planer, drill press and innumerable hand tools.  Work on the canoe stopped for over a month, but it is worth it just to be better organized, not to mention the added tools.  Not in the picture is a rack with over 30 clamps.  I hear you can never have too many clamps.

I did a little more stripping tonight and tried the orange non-methyl chloride stripper.  It seems to work almost as well and is a lot less nasty to work with.  I think I'll still need the methyl chloride stuff to get the last layer off between the ribs.