The next step was to cut out all the rest of the forms. Here are half of them stacked up.
After that I had to saw out the rectangle in the middle of each form, so that I could slide the form onto the boxbeam. After I did that I had to slide them all on so I could get an idea of what it was going to look like. They're not carefully aligned yet, or fastened on, but it's starting to look like it should!
Fitting the front end form onto the boxbeam entailed some cutting. I had to saw the front of the strongback diagonally, then cut back parallel to the bottom of the boxbeam to make room for form #2 to fit on, since it's too small for the full-size boxbeam to fit inside. It wasn't as difficult as I had feared, and it seems to have come out okay. Here is a closeup of the assembly next to form #2.
Now here's the same view, only this time I've removed the edge of the end form and replaced it with cedar. This piece is called the inner stem. The ends of the strips will be fastened to it, and it will stay inside the kayak.
The cedar is from a fence board I got at Home Depot. It was an experiment. I couldn't find any cedar around here, except for those cheap fence boards. I picked through the pile until I found a couple of boards with pretty straight grain and few knots. It was very rough, so I smoothed down the sides with the belt sander. I decided that it would take way too long to smooth down enough boards for an entire kayak - plus the boards weren't 3/4" thick, so my strips would have ended up narrow. That wouldn't be a huge problem, but it would mean more strips, which would mean more sanding with the belt sander. I decided to spend some money and buy nice redwood boards. However, I'm glad I bought the cedar, because it is perfect for the inner stems (bow and stern.)
If you really wanted to build a kayak cheaply, the cedar boards at Home Depot might be the way to go, especially if you had a planer, and could plane down the rough sides. In my case, I would have had to purchase the planer, which would have eaten up the savings of buying the cheap boards.
The next step will be to fasten the forms to the boxbeam. This step would seem to be crucial, since the final form of the boat will be locked in with the forms. I hope I get things aligned correctly.
This was one of my greatest fears when I built the Chesapeake - that I would build a bit of a bend in the overall form of the kayak, and it would tend to always steer a little bit to one direction. Luckily, in the case of the Chesapeake, it didn't happen. I'm hopeful that it won't be a problem this time either. Practically speaking, when you get out on the water, the straight-tracking characteristics of your boat seem to depend mostly on your stroke, the wind, and whether you lean to one side or the other. I'm thinking you wouldn't notice a slight tendency for the hull to veer one way or the other. However, I'm still going to labor to get it as straight as I possibly can!
It will be interesting to figure how much time on this project is spent getting ready - building tablesaw tables, building a router table, building the boxbeam, building the stands, cutting out the forms, aligning them and fastening the to the boxbeam, and how much time will be spent actually building the boat - ripping the strips, routing the edges, attaching them to the forms, building the recessed cockpit and coaming, fiberglassing, building the bulkheads and hatches, and outfitting.
Once again, I'm thinking that there will be a real advantage to build more than one Guillemot. After all the preliminary work is done, it seems like it would be a waste to use the strongback for only one boat - especially since there are three members of my family without good kayaks!