: Myrl,

: It looks to me as though you outlined the outside edge of the recess with a
: thin strip of contrasting wood. Did you have to steam this piece to get it
: to follow the compound bends? I'm at this stage on the Arica's Silver
: project I'm working on and am trying to bend a 1/8 X 1/4 piece of walnut
: around the outside edge and have been having a bit of trouble. I'v been
: trying to make it work with just a heat gun and soaking the end with the
: tight bend in a glass of water. Maybe I should be building a steamer?
: Scott

You've got a good eye Scott, there is not all that much contrast.

I did put a boarder peice on the edge of the recess. The thin strip was a left over bit of wood I had kicking around. It is cedar, but for the life of me I can not remember where it came from. I think it was left over from ripping the 1/4 by 1/4 feature strips. I figured I'd try and get it to bend around the recess to clean up the edge. It worked pretty well, no steaming was used, however there was a bit of cracking, and a very slight kink in the one corner, but not noticable. THe edgeing is around 1/16th of an inch thick, so it bent pretty easy.

I had planed to put a second thin strip on of darker wood as well, however I had alot of troube ripping a thin piece of wook on purpose. it kept getting jammed down the table saw. I did endup with enough to do the job, but the dark wood kept breaking, as I ran it around the cockpit. It was not really imporant to me, so I just left it as is.

A steamer would have solved the problem I'm sure. They are easy to do, a kettle, two rags, and some plastic pipe. make the pipe long enough to set the sticks inside, one side of the pipe goes over the kettle the other side gets a rag suffed in it, leave a bit of a whole to let some steam out, but block most of it. Stuff the other rag in same end as the kettle to prevent steam from comming out.

Have you got the flowers on yet? I've abandoned my plan of doing an Inlay, I'd like to, but I also want to finish the kayak, so I can use it this summer.

take care,

Myrl