Today, the work on ripping the strips began in earnest. We (Jon & I) went to Thaine Norris' house to use Thaine's über-tablesaw of power, as well as his planer and jointer. These tools made the task of ripping the strips a bit easier. This photo is of Thaine and Jon building a jig for the table saw.

Thaine and Jon working on the jig. The jig was necessary to allow the easy placement of featherboards and extend the fence. We were cutting some huge pieces of wood -- one piece of Jon's was 2 inches thick by 8 inches wide by 20 feet long.

Finishing up the work on the jig. You can see the top of the planer in the background.

Jon and I are inspecting the fruit of our labors. This is one strip of Western Red Cedar. It is 1/4 inch by 3/4 inch by 20 feet long. It will serve well when stripping the long, fair portions of the hull of the kayak. Note the rollers. These were used to catch the long ends of the boards as they came off of the table saw. We had similar rollers set up on the feeding end of the table saw. We attached the "goal posts" to keep the wood relatively centered, to feed it properly. The thin strips are quite flexible and we had problems with them rolling off of the sides of the rollers. The goal posts helped quite a bit. And, we once again learned that you can never have too many clamps.

Jon feeding the table saw. You can see the new jig in all its glory here. Note the yellow plastic featherboard hooky. That little gem was a lifesaver. It allowed for quick and easy setting of a featherboard to apply horizontal pressure. Otherwise, setting a featherboard there would have been a nightmare. This allowed us to really rock & roll once we started cutting strips in earnest.

Once again, this is Jon and I ripping the thin strips. You can see the jointer in the left of the frame, and at the back left you can see one of the rollers with the "goal posts" doing its job.

An even better shot of the goal posts. Here you can also see the featherboards doing their jobs. The item in the foreground is a push-stick that made the final inches of the rip a much safer process.