Scarfing Plywood

Chris is using marine grade meranti plywood to build his boat.

Like standard plywood, it comes in 4 foot by 8 foot sheets. To get the long planks needed for his boat pieces, Chris joined the plywood together in a process called scarfing.

First, Chris cut the last few inches of plywood sheets down at an angle of about 8%. He used a special jig made for his circular saw to do this. (It may have involved removing the safety guard on the saw. Don't try this at home.)  This is how it looked:

Then he overlapped both ends with epoxy in the middle and screwed it to his shop floor until the epoxy dried.

Remove the screws and voila! you have longer sheets of plywood!  The epoxy is strong enough that the joints are stronger that the wood itself.  A good thing, since that will be what holds the entire boat together.

Chris sanded off the excess to make the whole thing nice and smooth.