Today we had a great beginning to our project. We're building 8 McKenzie River drift boats and we spent all day scarfing plywood and cutting out parts for the sides. The bottom is 54 inches wide so we are scarfing four pieces together. We got the first half of 8 boat bottoms done today. That meant we had to scarf 32 pieces together. Each scarf was almost 7 feet long. That's over 200 feet of scarfing. We had a plywood scarfing jig that made it, if not easy, at least efficient. I managed to buy a used 10 1/4" Skillsaw on Craigslist.com for $40 and it did a great job. We managed to trip our 15amp breaker a few times when we pushed it too hard and it started getting hot. We managed to find the perfect pace and started turning out perfect scarfs in about 6 minutes for each 7 foot panel. We started with a brand new 10" carbide combination blade and it was shot after going through over 200 linear feet of 3" cuts. The saw must be at least 20 years old. The only thing better than using a great tool that you paid a lot of money for is using one that you got at great price.

Dennis from RiversWest.org was there to help us all day. He's a real trooper. We also had one father, one uncle, one grandmother and one supermom helping our crew of 18 boys. We are on schedule for finishing the boats by Friday. They will still need some sanding and paint but they will be complete.

It was interesting to watch the tools at work today. In the first few minutes of work, we had about 6 different jig saws going. After 30 minutes, only the two Bosch jig saws were still in use. The others just were not getting the job done. If you don't buy the best tools, it will cost you over and over again.

Tomorrow we'll scarf the two halves of the bottoms together and butt join the two sides. Those will cure overnight and then on Wednesday we'll start putting the panels together with wire. Since these boats are built with a stitch and glue process, there are very few frames. We just need to make one for amidships and two for the bow and stern flotation tanks. We'll post photos every day so stay tuned.