Today I began shaping the rails on my cedar hws. It is by far the most fun I’ve had so far, and makes my want to use foam so I can do this more without the six month lead time. In my planning, I must have drawn my rail bands wrong, because after putting in the bands and then doing some initial sanding, I’ve got one heck of a bevel remaining on the bottom. It’s basically the whole bottom rail band still intact. I was going for a 60/40 at the portion of the rail with the photos.
DISCLAIMER: 1. I’ve never shaped rails before. 2. I don’t have a real camera at the moment (this is from my phone)
I’ve rotated all the strange angle photos so the bottom of the board is down.
overview:
closeup:
showing the leftover band a bit better (the ruler is on the bottom of the board, which is flat at this point):
I’m afraid that if I just sand it out, the shape of the rail will be screwy, more like the narrow end of an egg.
Should I leave the bevel? Just thinking of the Parameter board from Oneula’s Firewire thread:
The piccies are hard to check out but don’t be afraid to sand off the outside railband, mark out with a scribe the area along the rail area that needs attention, maybe 1/2" out then 1" out, work only within that 1/2" space, use those lines as guides.
Or you could just leave it alone and see how it goes.
Yeah, those pics are pretty lousy. That’s one reason I included the one from Oneula’s thread, that’s kind of what it looks like. I think I’ll finish sanding the rails in the morning (ignoring the bevel issue), see what it looks like, and go from there.
Got any idea what a bevel like that might do to performance?
You’ll also be surprised how much of it disappears after glassing. Wrap up your bottom glass, surform your lap, wrap down your deck glass, surform again, and hotcoat…it’ll almost be gone (unless you work at making sure it stays). If the edge shows after the second layer of glass, run the surform along the ridges and even if you bite into the fibers a bit, there’s still an intact layer underneath - no big deal.
I ended up just finishing the sanding this morning, and the bevel was nearly gone. I was really suprised. I think my rails are a bit closer to a 55/45 than the 60/40 I was going for, but that’s fine. I just got done applying my first coat of epoxy to the bottom and rails. I’m going to try TomBloke’s method of using 8 layers of epoxy over the cedar sans glass. I figure that if it doesn’t work I can always sand and glass later.
I really don’t know much about this type of construction. I’m just posting to give you props on the woodwork. Some really nice details there. I like how you staggered the joints on the rails. The tail and nose are nice too.
Thanks Ryan. I’ll try to get better pics up once my housemate gets home in a couple weeks with her fancy digital camera.
Update on the rails:
So I ended up sanding them out pretty well. I’ve since applied 5 layers of epoxy to the bottom deck and the rails. I was having problems with the epoxy bumping up at first, so I sanded it down again, read the archives for epoxy gloss coat problems, and tried again. The bottom deck turned out really well. I didn’t really worry about the rails too much. I’m going to sand down the rails again, and with the extra epoxy layers, which are 4mm thick, it should really smooth out the shape. That’s going to wait untill next week though, I’ve got a summit attempt of Mt. Whitney that I’m leaving for tomorow.
