Making the Rub Rails

I bought a piece of straight-grained southern yellow pine a few days ago, for the rub rails. Yesterday I carefully sawed it in half, then used the thickness planer to make two pieces 1 1/4" by 1". The plans specify the rub rails to taper to 7/8" x 3/4" at the ends. Making those tapers took most of the day. The rub rails are highly visible, and any lack of fairness would be obvious. So I calculated the dimensions at each one-foot point, marked them on the pine sticks, connected the points with lines to plane to, and gingerly tapered them with the handheld planer. How trimming two slender sticks could generate enough planer chips to provide the circus with sawdust for a week I don't know, but it did. Once I had the pieces planed down to the lines, I ran their outside edges along a router, with the help of a friend, to round them off.

Southern yellow pine is the timber they use to make pressure treated construction lumber. But if you can get a good, clear, untreated piece, it makes a good boatbuilding wood. It planes and sands smooth, and as it ages and the sap crystallizes, it becomes very hard. But once it is cut it needs to be screwed down pretty quickly or it will warp. It is a good choice for the rub rails, and anyway it was the only wood I could get locally in the 14+ foot length I need.

Today I pre-drilled all the screw holes, sanded the rub rails, and gave them a sealer coat of epoxy.

The rub rails, will go on after the topside is sanded smooth at the sheer, where the fabric from the deck overlaps the side. After that all the aft portion of the tiller will be the last wood piece to make. And I need to install lifting rings. Then I'll just have a lot of sanding and painting to do.

The epoxy on the deck has cured long enough that I scrubbed it with isopropyl alcohol today and began to sand it. I got one side done. It will still need fairing, filling, and one or more additional coats of epoxy before it is ready to paint, but today's sanding got the one side 95% smooth. Look at the difference: