Creating the Coaming

The coaming is made of a piece of 3" black walnut that comes with the Redfish kit. The black walnut coaming will match the stems. Here it has already been cut to the taper of the cockpit recess. A line is scribed along the recess to prepare for the cutout.

I used a fine tootch metal saber saw blade to do the cutout. You cut it just on the inside of the line and then sand it to the point that the cockpit riser fits snugly into it.

Here is the riser in the cockpit recess read for the lip. The lip is made from about 12 wafer thin pieces of 1/2" black walnut. They are laminated together with thickened epoxy and clamped in place around the riser. The riser has been taped since this is just to give the lip its shape. It will get expoxed to the riser in a next step.

To quote my son Ben " you can never have enough clamps when building a boat".

Below is the front of the cockpit. The lip overlaps and will later by cut to a perfect miter

While working on this I have also been doing some other steps. Below is a cedar block thats installed in the bow and the stern to provide a place to later drill a hole for the rope handles

This piece of 28" x 28" piece of strips will be glassed on both sides and used to cut out the two bulkheads later.