Spring is here finally

Last fall I attempted to glue the front outside stem to the canoe. The glue didn't hold and the cold weather made me decide to wait until spring to try again. So with some warm weather and sunshine it was time to get back to it.

I pulled off the half glued stem, cleaned up the glue surfaces and tried again. I used an entire tube of slow setting epoxy (4 hour set time). There were some existing screw holes from previous stem attempts. I would use a few of these, but mostly relied on straps to hold the stem in place while the glue dried. The stem had straightened a bit over winter, so i needed to get enough pressure to bend the stem to the form of the canoe without bleeding the glue joint.

While waiting for the joint to dry, I milled another piece of ash for the rear stem. Previously I had been looking for a piece of wood with straight grain throughout. After bending the last stem, I realized I only needed straight grain in the section that gets bent. I cut some 5/4 ash down to 3/4 and used a 1/2" round over router bit to round the edges.