Plunge Router!

I had never used a plunge router. In fact, I had never seen one live and up close till now that Xabier lent me his router to carve the mortises for the qajaq's ribs. Thankfully, it already came with the settings, depth and bit size, I needed. Nonetheless, I'll admit I was a tad daunted by the contraption.

Anyway, I practiced a bit on a scrap piece, then breathed deep and got to work. It took a me a morning to get the 38 mortises done and a reasonable number of them are actually quite straight. I am in total awe of this thing. I don't even want to think if I had had to do this with a normal drill and a chisel... Thank you, Xabier. Oh, and whatever may seem in the picture, your router was not about to fall down. There was a clamp securing it.

Again, I've learnt things as I worked. By mortise 20 or so, I decided that time spent securing the gunwales to the sawhorses through the use of extra blocks of wood and clamps was well worth it, while fixing a clamp to the gunwales to act as a stop (and taking it off and reattaching it in a new position for each hole) was not. Too late for the previous 19 mortises...

By mortise 30, I became convinced that attaching a block of wood on one side flush with the gunwales' edge to increase the support base for the router was also time well spent. Again, late for some 29 previous mortises, but, should there be more qajaqs, not too late for the mortises in them.

Worry of the day (hour...): My rib stock is 5 mm thick, same as the router bit's diameter. Obviously, the mortises ended up a tiny bit wider than that and the fit with a trial piece of rib was not vey tight in some cases. I suppse that soaking and steaming the ash may make it thicken and the slightly loose fit may actually turn out helpful. Otherwise, I suppose that some really thin shims may help.