: Larry,

: Ouch! Having little clearance in my garage, what you did was always one of my
: worst fears.

:Ted

I saw your boats at R2K. Just lovely! I have already put bird's eye maple down the length of the shear panels and in a wide chevron in front of the cockpit before the panels were glued together. The veneer is not inlaid like yours so having a bit of a ridge in the final finish is a given. The trick will be finding a way to keep the veneer flush against the panels until it cures on the assembled deck. I'm thinking thickened epoxy, veneer, mylar, pieces of scrap cut to the shape of the veneer patches then weight it all down with a sandbag laid across the deck overlapping it all. If it still looks bad I guess I'm back to the shark attack story or painting a section of deck.

By the way, Ted, how did you cut your purple heart inlays and remove the top ply so smoothly? (Particularly the curves.) The bird's eye was very hard to cut a smooth line because of the zillions of little knots that give its classic look. I was using a razor knife and a fabric cutting wheel.

Larry