: 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.

What an interesting idea (the birdseye). That should set off the shear line nicely. I will be interested to see how it turns out.

: By the way, Ted, how did you cut your purple heart inlays and remove the top
: ply so smoothly? (Particularly the curves.)

I cut the veneer very carefully using an Xacto knife on a cutting mat. The deck panels were milled out using a Dremel plus Dremel router base. Getting the depth set just right was fussy, but once done this setup worked very well. I made an outline cut with a knife before milling. This allows the last little piece of wood to pop out before reaching the pencil outline so that there is less risk of milling outside of the intended area.

Ted

: Larry