Bonding and shaping the Gripe.

Hi guy's hope you had a good Christmass. This work was done in September 2006. I used the offcuts from the keel to laminate a blank for the gripe 12" long 1" thick. I marked a line across one end at 3/4" and planed one side down to it to give the gripe a taper. Using a bevel gauge I took the bevel between the stem and the keel and I transferred to the 1" thick end of the gripe and cut it with a pull saw. I offered this up to one side of the keel and marked the keel curve at this point onto the blank. I planed down to this line using a no4 smoothing plane. Finally I marked of a 45 degree bevel on the 3/4" end of the grip which I rough cut and tidied up with a block plane. The gripe was bonded with epoxy as shown in the photo.

A batten was used to mark the line the gripe would be planed down to. This was done first with a block plane then a spokeshave and final at the tip of the bow with a 1" chisel.

This came out quite well I was a bit relieved as I had struggled to see what it would look like in the lofting and had then decided to leave it to now and work it out. Phew!

Finally the blank I had left in the centre board slot could be cut out. I had already cut the side cuts but had left the blank in place to make shaping the keel easier. I made to end cuts with a coping saw and straightened up the edges using a block plane and chisel.

Job done.