Patsy, Tony, John, and Richard...Looks like we've got an international collaboration going on here. I hope you all get this...not quite sure how the e-mailed response works when you get into a thread here.

Patsy, look up the thread Steve the guy with the wife posted...April-May 2003. More pictures of works in progress. My pieces came milled for me from Classic Boat Kits in Ontario Canada. The link is on Rob Macks' web site. Here's the excerpt from my notes of that process:

North Star Notes: winter-spring '02
Bow Piece Assembly:
Upper
Came in four parts, small to big, bottom to top. Used bamboo skewers to pin together while epoxy cured. Clamped #'s 1-4, drilled holes for bamboo pins, epoxied all mating surfaces, clamped to cure. Roughed the shape with the dozuki saw. Finished the shape on the belt sander.

*Rob Macks instructions call for a belt sander to be clamped on a jig in order to help the shaping. I wrecked my belt sander after shaping the upper bow piece and all the stations. Any time you use a tool in a way it isn't really designed for, your asking for trouble. Then again, maybe my belt sander was a cheapo.

Lower Bow Piece
Came in four parts, inner pieces in half, two outer pieces shaped.
Pinned inner pieces with tooth picks, drilled into mating surfaces to hold tooth picks. Epoxied mating surfaces, joined and clamped to a table (flat surface) Plastic over the table top to prevent permanent attatchment to table. Beveled inner piece to allow sharper keel*, and to match the bevel of the temporary bow piece, connected to station #1. Taped off the areas on inner and outer bow pieces where no epoxy is wanted.

*This is what Tony was talking about...it's like the gunnels of a canoe when you taper them towards the stem. The inner and outer gunwhales are tapered on the sides that make contact with the hull, giving a gradual taper to the stems without affecting the thickness of the hull, or ruining the outer surface of the external gunnel, and the deck surface of the interior gunnel. I think the term is "back bevel", but a wood worker might be able to describe it better.

One coat, no thickener to wet out the surface, then peanut butter consistancy for the bond. Clamped to squeeze excess epoxy out to keel line, and be neater where strips join bow piece recess.

Before Shaping upper bow piece: Matching angle of upper bow piece to angle of lower bow piece where they join the temporary bow piece attatched to station #1. Looks to be running at an odd downward slope, may have to rout at an angle to compensate on center of upper bow piece (underside where it mates with the lower bow piece)

Rear Stem Assembly
Pieces came as 1/8" strips, to be glued on top of each other and facilitate shaping on station molds.

Soaking overnight, all pieces and tacking on jig outside post lines where excess will be trimmed. Only stripping to bilge line on stern stem (3" from keel) where strips from the hull will take over to end the stem.

Bungie cord tied off on extension on jig, through fiberglass cloth cardboard center tube.
1. Control of preasure on pieces to bend
2. Round (cardboard center for fiberglass roll like the one that is in the middle of a roll of toilet paper, but much thicker and of course longer) to adhear to central shape of stem assembly.

Finished planking part of stern stem.
*pre soaked and bent strips on jig
*assembled the station molds: Stern #11 then #12 then #13 (North Star stations), Hot glued, attatched them to L brackets and L brackets to the same jig used for bending strips
*Tried to duplicate the procedure to use on strong back for full boat assembly
*The inside stem sent with strips from Classic Boat Kits faired to 1/8" at keel influenced decision to set up stations and stem mould and plank, rather than assemble two halves together later. (I might have done this process on the strong back with the rest of the stations in set up....but it was winter when I did this, and I wasn't sure how the cold would effect the wood glue. Now I realize it wouldn't have mattered as I ended up stripping the deck this past winter '03, and it worked fine)
-tried to visualize connecting the halves together on the inside stem and couldn't see it confidantly enough to trust one side at a time stripping.
-the strips didn't line up exactly flat, and ended up stair stepping quite a bit. Looks really rough, we'll see how it turns out. Stripped the bilge line where the strips coming from the rest of hull will fill in to end.
-final fairing of hull will be tricky because of the thickness of the hull will end up being very thin as the stairs get sanded down. Fairing the inside may be almost impossible because there will be no space to fit my hands or tools to sand at the very tip. (I ended up filling in the stairs with gooky smutz, and not fairing them down for fear of sanding a hole in the tail piece or leaving it so thin it would puncture under heavy use...the expedition to Australia via Sweden.)

Bow pieces
I'm not sure if narrowing the keel edge of the lower bow piece helped, but after gluing the two outer pieces to lower bow, and then fairing to the middle piece it looks satisfactory. Stripped 3 pieces at the tip, where it will be difficult to get to with the upper bow piece installed. Needs a litle filler in places, but looks satisfactory. Also rounded off the edge at the top.

The upper bow piece is satisfactory. Used the side ways belt sander jig to get the shape I wanted, then cut my lines for the recess with a dozuki saw. finished the recess with a dremmel tool. Not exactly like in the plans, but close. upper part arks over the sheer line of temporarry bow mould, where in plans it looks flush with sheer line coming off station #1-hoping this will minimalize the slope of bow coming off the rest of the boat.

I hope this isn't too cryptic, and I'm sorry that I can't post the pictures or the drawings I did to describe what happened. I can say that the roughness did fair out okay, with the exception of a few places where the sander went down to the bonding agent of the laminated strips on the tail piece. Hardly noticable from shore.

I think a tricky part was getting the two sections to join at the water line where stips running off the rest of the boat were taking over to the stem. The total thickness of the tailpiece strips was 1/4", and the rest of the strips were milled 3/16" (Sorry international boat friends, English system is still in wide spread use over here....too much money in the conversions I guess.) Another tricky aspect here was tapering strips to make a good join, and maintain a little continuity in the strip pattern. When I stripped the tail piece, I let the taper run from the stem's tip in toward what would be the bow of the boat. This meant the closed end was more towards station #11 on the North Star. Strips going on the boat from the sheer line towards the bottom needed the taper to overlap with the ones that were already part of the tail piece...I ended up tapering in the opposite direction on the tail piece's final strip to make the connection....sort of like > and