Step 1. Get bits sorted out.
After a bunch of phoning around we sourced our wood and a laser cutting service.
Guillermo at Ikon Displays in Otay Mesa came back with both a good price on the job and an 8' x 4' machine that could easily handle the ply sheets. A couple of other places in SD came back with good hourly rates but had smaller machines that would require extra work.
Otay Mesa is pretty far from our North County base in Oceanside but the best ply quote came from Forest Plywood who could deliver to their facility in National City and searching around we found that TH&H in MiraMesa had a good stock of Sitka Spruce and Western Red Cedar so we borrowed a truck and made a round trip of the three locations. All three of these companies have been excellent to work with.
Ikon uses Illustrator to manage their cutting files and the autocad files didn't properly extract scale (there are old work arounds for this but the current state of software meant these have changed). Guillermo came up with a workaround going via pdf from coral draw and bob's your uncle we were in business.
And here it is in action!
Guillermo at Ikon Displays in Otay Mesa came back with both a good price on the job and an 8' x 4' machine that could easily handle the ply sheets. A couple of other places in SD came back with good hourly rates but had smaller machines that would require extra work.
Otay Mesa is pretty far from our North County base in Oceanside but the best ply quote came from Forest Plywood who could deliver to their facility in National City and searching around we found that TH&H in MiraMesa had a good stock of Sitka Spruce and Western Red Cedar so we borrowed a truck and made a round trip of the three locations. All three of these companies have been excellent to work with.
Ikon uses Illustrator to manage their cutting files and the autocad files didn't properly extract scale (there are old work arounds for this but the current state of software meant these have changed). Guillermo came up with a workaround going via pdf from coral draw and bob's your uncle we were in business.
With most of the ply loaded in the back (deck sheeting TBD) we decided to get enough timber to get framing but not all of it. Jeff and I each picked up about 1"x10"X6' spruce and 1"x10"x10' Western Red Cedar. Current thoughts are to use the spruce at the critical points (Chines, Gunwhales, compression points, stem, transom) and fill the rest out with the much lighter WRC.
Back home things started to look a bit more like a boat was being built!
One small word - because I wanted my build box to be movable it needed to be solid. To prevent twist I've skinned it in 1/4" ply top and bottom. Then it has flip down wheels to move it about and I'm planning on having it up on the wheels at the edge of the garage when in storage mode and out on small steady feet when in production mode.
One thing worth mentioning is that the laser burnt the wood a fair bit. Guillermo had said that a plastic wrap was an option that would reduce scorching. In hindsight I'd chose that. The burnt wood cleans up pretty easily in areas that need good wood to wood bonding, but the extra up front setup would have saved later tedium.
ReplyDelete