Steve McCarroll served in the US Army for 24 years. In January, 2020, he registered to become a Woodworking Warrior. He took the safety course (which is required for all veterans to use the shop) and then thought “What do I do now?”

I've got all the bling on the boat and the last of the varnish on the decks and gunwales. I'm going to shoot another coat or two on the hull. I've got some varnish drips and a few spots of glue from putting the gunwales together that I want too sand out before I call the boat done.

Sneak preview! I've gotten most of the bling fastened to the boat and some of the finish. I screwed the stem bands to the stems and hung the carrying handles today and got another coat of varnish on the wood parts of the boat. The next time I get a sunny day I'll try to get the boat outside and get some better close up shots of details on the boat.

Every Windsor Chair Making class is an immersive, unforgettable experience. It is a week of hard, grueling work followed by pride and accomplishment at making an object so incredible it will last well beyond your lifetime. Last month, a father and son, Dean and Ryan Ramsey joined us to build Windsor Continuous Arm Chairs.

Two more things to sand. Canoes generally have a center thwart, something going from one side of the canoe to the other which gives the hull more rigidity. Small solo canoes like this one have the paddler near the center of the boat where a center thwart would be in the way.

This is what I had in mind when I said to remember all the goopy resin on the decks and gunwales. I've burned through a pile of sandpaper in the last 3 or 4 days and I've got most of the sanding done. I used the random orbital sander with 100 grit pads to knock most of the resin off and then worked up through 120, 150 and 180 grits by hand. I had nice weather the last two days so I moved outside to do the sanding. That keeps the sawdust out of the shop but more than that, natural sunlight shows sanding imperfections better than any lights I have inside the shop.

Stem bands. The stems are like the bumpers on a canoe. I like to finish a canoe with brass bands on the leading edges of the stems. The functionality is questionable but they sure have a nautical look. A mill file to shape the ends, sand paper and steel wool to polish them and they're ready to go on the boat. They'll just be screwed on, not glued so they can be taken off the boat to re-polish them when the brass loses its shine.

Like I hoped, today I was able to finish fastening all of the pieces of cherry that make up the gunwales. Everything is glued and screwed and I'll leave the boat alone and go enjoy the weather outside.

I've gotten the decks mostly machined and I'm putting a finish on the underneath sides as it will be harder to do once they are in the boat.

This is not a drill, I repeat this is not a drill (that's for you Chuck). There won't be any more fitting and adjusting on the pieces that make up the gunwales. The inner pieces are glued and screwed where they are going to stay.

The weather was nice yesterday and I had a marathon sanding session with the random orbital sander outside. The wood hull is sealed in epoxy resin and all of the sanding that I'm doing now is on the resin.

I'm still working on the four pieces of cherry that will make up the gunwales on the boat. They have paid visits to the table saw and the band saw and I've been all over them with planes and rasps. The more wood I can get off of them the easier they will be to fasten to the boat.

Clamp them in, take them out. Repeat. Getting the inwales cut to the right length and angles takes some time. The pieces of cherry started out being 3/4"x3/4" and I used a plane to taper them both in thickness and in width at each end. the shape of the canoe is something that the strips don't want to take and it takes a lot of clamps to hold them in place. The thinner they are, the easier they are to get bent in place.

I'm doing what I can without making a decision on the seat placement. I said I was glad to be done with the fiberglass and the main reason is that I get to move on to practicing the wood butcher's art. I'll have nine scuppers on each side of the boat, each one 4" long with 4" between each of them.

I'm tired of this view of the boat and am glad that it is time to move on from the fiberglass. I've got all of the coats of resin on the hull that she's going to get and I'm going to wait awhile to let it completely cure before I start sanding.

Sunday morning early I cranked up the heaters and the coffee pot. It took me two hours to get the first coat of resin on the cloth but the subsequent coats will be quicker than that. The inside of the boat is concave in most spots and it can take some persuasion to get the cloth to stick to the hull.

Next. I've got the cloth on the inside of the boat and am ready to pin it to the hull with resin. It's already noon and I like to have a full day to deal with a step like this so it won't happen before tomorrow. Hopefully it will be warmer in the next couple days, keeping the shop warm enough is tough when temps are in the 20's outside.

Same shot 24 hours later. I finished sanding the inside of the boat today and got a base coat of resin on before going to see our boys and girls high school basketball teams win games with out closest rivalry, Adrian. Today was a good day.

Almost there. I've sanded the inside of the hull as far as I can go with the random orbital sander and now I'll hand sand the last foot or so on each end. With that cleaned up I'll put a base coat of resin on the hull and then the fiberglass cloth with another 4 coats of resin.

What you don't want to see when you look in the bottom of your canoe. Dave's building form was good for clamping strips of wood together but not so good for being able to wipe up excess glue before it dried. I'll remove the larger chunks with chisels and then sand the rest. This might take awhile.