The Breast Hook

The savvy wood worker will notice that this piece of red oak is quite special, made even more so because I bought it at my local Home Depot.
I was looking thru the selection of oak boards just to see what sizes were available and doing cost comparisons. I pushed an 8x12 (11 1/4" wide and 8' long) board over to the side of the stack and low and behold this piece was there. I knew exactly what it was as soon as I saw it but I could not believe what I was looking at.
What makes it so special? It is what as known as "quarter sawn". Quarter sawn boards are special because the grain, as can be seen in the photo above, is not only perfectly straight and knot-free, the grain is also straight through the board. It is far more expensive to make quarter sawn boards because they are take more setup time in the lumber mill to produce.

The left picture below is how most lumber is cut. It is fast and easy to cut boards off the log with this layout. The picture on the right shows the layout of quarter sawn. Cutting these boards out of a log takes many more cuts and repositioning the log to get the quarter sawn boards. It also takes a larger tree trunk to get wide boards.
 

The quarter sawn red oak board I found at Home Depot was 11 1/4" wide, which means it came from a tree trunk that was at least 2' in diameter! To find a quarter sawn red oak board 11 1/4" wide at Home Depot is practically unheard of. If I purchased one at a specialty wood supply place it would have been many times more expensive. I immediately bought the 4' board without really knowing what I was going to use it for.

When I got home, I decided the first thing I would use it for was the breasthook. As is shown in the previous post, the breasthook is a very prominent and visible part of a small wooden boat, so this piece would be perfect.

The next two pictures show the inwales fitted into the breasthook. I glued 1/4" x 2 1/2" strips of red oak onto the underside (remember the hull is upside-down) of the breasthook to reinforce it across the grain. They won't be visible from the top and make the breasthook much stronger which is needed to securely hold a bow cleat and fairleads (if I decide to have them.)



Gluing the first couple strips to the breasthook. I've used nearly every type of clamp I own to hold everything in place for this glue-up. This is also when I made a serious error on the port-side strips (where the red handled clamps are). More on that in a later post.


Moving aft (backwards) on the hull, here I have applied 8 strips up from the gunnel and fitted them to match the angle of the strips coming down from the keel. I hand plane an angle on the end of each strip, fit check, and then plane a little more until the angle fits tightly against the upper strips.


The angle I have to plane into the end of the strips gets steeper and steeper as I apply more strips.


We're getting closer and closer! It's actually getting pretty exciting as I can see the end of this phase coming up.


A not-unexpected problem is starting to show itself: I'm running out of strips! I have only six 17' strips left and it looks like I need at least four more strips (fortunately they will be much shorter than 17') on each side. I already have several shorter cutoffs, so along with the cutoffs from the 17' strips I am hoping I will have enough to fill in the last gaps without too many butt joints.


Next post should show the installation of the "Whiskey strips".











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