Nick,

Most of the deck is from a great pair of 2x6 redwood boards that came from my dad's porch (they were being removed to make room for a remodel). I ripped one boards into 2" wide, 1/4" thick strips and the other sliced in half to make standard 3/4", 1/4" thick strips and cove/beaded both. The wide strips made the relatively un-curved deck go quickly. After the redwood deck was finished, I cut the general wave pattern and bordered the edges with thin (about 1/16'') cedar strips. Cutting out the design in sections, I inlaid the space with a light shade of WRC. After the filler coat I overlaid the more intricate waves from Japanese Ash (Tamo) veneer. It's a very cool wood, with all the bubbles and foam of a crashing wave. The design itself is a repeated abstraction of Hokusai's "Wave at Kanagawa" that shows up in logos and designs all over the place (Quicksilver comes to mind).

Doing veneer work on a very curved deck proved trickier than I first thought. I like how it turned out, even though there are a few dimples in the finish caused by the transition between veneer and deck. Thanks to Dave Sprygada for all the veneer overlay advice. His experience was invaluable.

The striped recess was made as a fluke. One of the redwood boards I cut into strips was half red and half white. The strips ended up half and half. I thought they were useless until I laid them out on the recess and voila! instant stripes.

Thanks for the interest,

Mike

p.s. Nick - I did the entire boat from the book (from lofting the forms to milling the strips to inlay and detail work), not knowing anyone who had built a Guillemot before. Thanks for the great directions and the inspiration to do this! I'm sure many boaters feel the same.