Fun with ash

I bought some nice ash boards for some solid wood pieces.  First up was the deck coaming.  It's not in the plans, but I liked the look that others had achieved.  Since it wasn't in the plans I spent a lot of time fussing with aesthetics.

I then marked the curve of the deck by clamping some scrap plywood down and tracing along the top if it onto another piece of scrap.

After cutting the ply and verifying the fit I traced it onto an ash board and cut out it out, leaving it overly long and tall.

Without a saw to cut 1" thick hardwood along an arc I cut perpendicular to the line every inch or so and then chiseled out the bulk before using a spokeshave and rasp to clean it up.

Once I got this all fit I set the angle with my homemade bevel gauge.

Holding the board at this angle I captured the bevel using a compass.

 I then used the compass to trace the bevel on the other side of the stock.

This allowed me to plane in the bevel.  Because tilting the stock causes the arc to change slightly, I had to check the fit and adjust the curve a little so that it still matched the arc of the deck.

I felt 1" was too thick.  I used various scrap thickness held roughly in place to get an idea of what thickness I liked best.  I settled on 1/2", which meant planing the piece down.  To give myself some thickness references I set my circular saw to depth of material I want to remove, then made a bunch of cuts across the face.  This allowed me to plane it flat without having to constantly check to ensure I didn't end up with one side thinner than the other.  I used my electric planed for the bulk of it, then fine tuned it with my jack plane.

 Once I had both pieces to this state I then used a square to get a vertical line of the deck traced onto the stock.  I knew this wasn't going to be exact, but I had given myself some extra length to work with, so by checking and adjusting I was able to get a nice fit at the tip of the chevron.

Because I had cut the pieces both long and tall and set them in place I then decided on a final size based on aesthetics.  Basically, I had to get it tall enough to be functional, but not too tall near the center. and it needed to taper enough toward the ends to not block the line formed by curve of the deck at the ends.  It's about 2.5" tall at the center and about 1/2" at the ends.  I also planed the top edge to be parallel with the deck.  A cross section of one of the pieces would be a parallelogram.

To attach it I screwed up through the deck.  Blindly feeling in the forward compartment with a flat head screwdriver and screwing upward led to the longest time it has ever taken me to tighten a single screw.  After dry fitting everything in place I took it apart and epoxied it into place, using the screws to hold it tightly against the deck.

 The next thing was to make some cleats.  They will go on the stern of the boat to be used for dock lines and for the mainsheet rope traveler.  I looked around online until I found a shape I liked and read up on appropriate sizing (5").  I drew several mockups on paper until I settled on a final shape, then transferred this to cardboard and then to my stock.  I first drilled the holes and then cut out the rough shape.

I then planed and rasped to profile.

Then more rasping and sanding took it 3D.  They each took me about 1.5 hours total.

I still need to drill and countersink the boltholes for mounting.  They are actually the same length, but the closeness of the picture makes the one standing up look larger due to it being closer to the lens.