First battens going on the mold.

Hello guy's

This work was started in mid September 2006, I had sourced some straight grained timber locally in 3m lengths 22mm by 100mm. I ripped this down to 22mm square battens which I scarf joined using PVA wood glue to make battens of 20' approx as shown in this photo.
As you can see from this photo I have marked the sheer line at each mold and have offered up the first batten at these marks using c clamps. The line was checked for fairness and any obvious high spots adjusted. These adjustments were transferred to the other side.

The positions and depth at each batten was marked using a purpose made marking gauge made from an off of batten. The slots were cut out with a coping saw. The batten was then clamped into position and adjusted for fairness using shavings that were produced when planing the scarf joints as shims. The batten was then screwed into place. The last picture shows five battens on the mold I was starting to run out of material now and was having trouble finding good quality timber that was straight without knots to made good battens. I got round this to start with by scarf jointing all the usable offcuts from the battens I had already made. This produced surprisingly good battens that produced quite fair curves but as the offcuts got shorter and the number of joints per batten increased until it took longer to make a good batten. This went on until mid December until I had to find timber from further afield at a much higher cost so no further progress was made until the new year.