The inside of the hull of my Panache has been sitting partially sanded for a couple of weeks. I had gone as far into the stems as possible with my sander, but I was still left with about 4ft at each end where the sander wouldn't reach. I had put-off the remaining sanding partly because of the dreaded honey-do list, partly because of other self-inflicted tasks around the house, but mainly because I dreaded all the hand sanding I had left to do.

This past weekend, I went to Builder's Square (our local, chaotic, unorganized home improvement store) to get a Surform plane. I knew it wouldn't reach all the way into the stems, but I thought it would help. I bought the plane, and on a whim, I bought a Surform Scraper. It's basically a plastic handle with a small patch of convex surform at the end. I don't know what it cost, but it couldn't have been more than a couple bucks. I didn't get around to using it until last night. I started trying to level the strips using the scraper with the grain. Unfortunately, I just got deep grooves where the sides of the scraper touched the bilge. Oh well, I didn't waste much money on it. Just for fun, I turned the scraper at a right-angle to the strips, and committed the cardinal sin of woodworking--I scraped across the grain. I had instant satisfaction. Here's all the cool things I discovered: the curve of the tool fits the curve of the bilge so does a good job of leveling, the surface it left on the wood was rough, but it didn't leave big gouges, the tool is feather-light but very effective, it cuts on the draw stroke and is very easy to control, it fits almost all the way into the 'V' of the stem so there's very little heavy-duty sanding left to do. I was in heaven. I turned up the Pat Metheny and went to town.

I don't know if anyone else has used these little gizmos, but for me it was the perfect tool for the job. I finished the fore stem in a couple hours. That may not sound like much of a feat, but it was easy work (actually fun when I consider what I expected to have to go through). I'm looking forward to working on the aft stem tonight. Yahoo!

Ross

PS. I'm going to return the Surform Plane unused. That is, I'll return it when my frustration level with Builder's Square abates.