Building The Vera Cruise

[Jimbob]

Carl,
That's fantastic!!!
Can you make me one? (just kidding, you have a boat to build)
Jim

[JoeM]

Looking good! Raising the bar even more!

Is that all inlay work, paint, branding/burning wood, or a combination? Hope you don't mind sharing your secrets, what woods are you using to get the nice contrast?

I may have to do something like this, for the boat or just by itself.

[jenko]

fantastic Carl

[mrintense]

Wow, Thanks Roberta, Tracy Jim, Joe, and Pete!

The perfection of course is in the eye of the beholder and we are our own worse critics, but there are imperfections in the cutting out of the pieces. A few small gaps that I hope will be less visible once the part is epoxied down and encapsulated.

Joe, no real trick to doing this. I first did up a color version of the artwork to get some idea of the contrasts, then went to woodcraft and bought a couple of packages of thin veneers with different types of wood. This artwork is mostly maple, mahogany, cherry and walnut with some small bits of dyed something or other for the ropes (don't know what type of wood). I also stained a couple of pieces of the mahogany as I had extra of that. I stained sections of the sample with Georgian Cherry, Dark Mahogany Brown, And American Oak color stains from General Finishes. These are all stains I had laying around from previous work. Then it was simply a matter of choosing the best representations of each color using what I had available. My wife, who is artistic, helped in this regard. That shadowy area on the water to the right of the wave was pure luck, it was a different shade in the walnut veneer.

I wrote up a short article in my blog explaining it a bit more.

Thanks again everyone. I am going to try and get it veneered to the partition today.

[mrintense]

Got some more work done on the partition. The artwork and veneer has been applied and I've steamed and bent the edge cherry edge cap. After it's dried out, I'll epoxy it into position. I am going to have to do a bit of stain repair work on the art as some of the stain was removed when I cleaned up the epoxy.

[searay85]

you want an oilless piston pump for vacuum souce. try finding a Gast double wobble piston pump on ebay and the rig from Joe wood worker website. I have that rig in my wood shop. works well!

[neel thompson]

You are amazing Carl !!!

[ian bell]

Fantastic Carl ,are you going to do the "Glen-L logo as well.
Ian

[hoodman]

What a nice touch, Carl! Excellent!

[tysman52]

Very Nice Carl!
-JT

[steveh41]

Looking great Carl!

[DrBryanJ]

Beautiful work Carl!

[mrintense]

Thanks Ian, Neel, Matt, JT, Steve and Bryan for the compliments. It's been enjoyable this week while I've been off from work. I was worrying all week that this wasn't going to work out but it did. Need to worry less!

And thanks SeaRay for the input on the vac pump. So far I haven't needed to vac bag anything. All the veneers came out just fine using weights and a plywood board to spread the load. The partition was the piece I was most worried about in this regard and both sides work great.

Yesterday I got the edge cap bonded on and this morning it was cleaned up and the edges rounded over. I was originally thinking of staining it this morning, but after looking at this picture, I am thinking about holding off on the staining until I get more of the interior work done. We'll see because I am anxious to get an encapsulation coat on the partition to protect it.

[Milhouse]

It looks great! Its nice that you have the patience to add details like this to get the boat that you want and not try and hurry up and finish and "add them later." In my experience the details never do actually get added "later"

[mrintense]

I've been away from the forum for a bit. Basically, just going through a building slump. Ran into some issues with staining the partition after trying several different finishes. I got tired of having to go back and do work over. Then it got colder here and the garage wasn't so inviting as normal.

I'll get back into it soon.