Draft post from the 18th I forgot about:

Whoo, productive weekend. I bought me first sledgehammer and tore out some of the ugly cinderblock wall so we can replace it with a slightly less ugly cinderblock wall, one that's on our side of the property line. Busted up six feet of concrete path—now I've got a huge pile of cinderblock and concrete to get rid of. Of which to get rid. Of which rid of which to get. Anyway, busy, yes. I cut out the panels for canoe the first and glued the butt blocks on. My epoxy and fiberglass tape should get here on Friday, so I'll be close to finished by the end of the weekend. Most importantly, though, I bought an angle grinder, which is just about the coolest power tool ever. I have no idea why anyone would ever need a reciprocating saw.

It might be a good idea, though, to get a sanding wheel for the grinder (and maybe even a sanding grinder that runs at sanding speed instead of cutting speed). Trying to reshape my cuts with the metal cutting wheel has been kind of silly: it burns the wood, and makes ripples instead of smoothing out the lines. The sander isn't helping much, but that's probably because I'm cheap and don't replace the paper every minute. Anyway, I got the side panels cut, and instead of trying to loft out a twelve foot by one inch curve, I just plotted ten or so points on a parabola and drew straight lines between. It's more than likely within the half inch tolerance claimed on the plans.

I don't know quite how much I shaved off the edges of the sides and the bottom for symmetry's sake, but the edge of the bottom is around 4 inches shorter than the corresponding edges of the side panels, both fore and aft. Oh. Y'know, I just noticed the bottom half-panel on the plans is 6' 3 1/2" long—I bet I cut it at an even six foot. That would explain why the last bend in the loft was so much sharper than the rest. You're supposed to mark that, people! Hoo boy. Well, I guess I'll just go back and scale everything else down 5% to match and see how it all fits together. Keep doing that, and I'll be paddling down the river in a three foot long canoe. I'll save a bundle on epoxy!