Filler

So with the stringers all attached to the stems, it is finally time to take the canoe of the strong back, and work on it right way up.

At this point, the ribs are still not attached to the gunwales.

To attach them, we applied glue and staple them.  The staples will eventually be covered by the outwale.  Because there's not a lot of rigidity yet, some of the staples did not go in all the way.  We'll fix that later before we put the outwales on.

With regards to positioning the ribs, we started out measuring on the gunwale, but eventually gave up and just faired them a little bit by eye.  This worked much better.

When all the ribs were attached, the next step was to add the filler pieces in between them.  We started at the end (we haven't determined which is bow and stern yet).  We used the microplane to get the filler to fit into the stems.

We used small spring clamps to hold the filler in place after it was glued.

We continued until all the filler was in.

But when we were done, we noticed a problem.  The filler wood was thicker than the ribs.  This meant that we would have a gap in the gunwale if we left it like this.