Cutting Ribs to Shape

The bent ribs have been drying in the hull for a while and it was time to cut them down to size to prepare for fine tuning. This involved marked the ribs at the gunwhale with a pencil and then cutting them down with a coping saw. Initially I thought I could just saw horizontally along the sheerline and move from rib to rib. But this proved to be too ackward at this scale.


Trying to cut down ribs
Instead I carefully removed each rib and placed them face down on a table corner and then proceeded to cut them with the saw.


Cutting on the table
After each was done, it was layed into position around the previous one so that I ended up with two identical sets of ribs. The ones nearest the stems had to be cracked to fit into the tight V-shape of the hull at those locations, but this isn't unheard of.


Ribs organized for placement later

Interesting that when layed out on the table, they look quite uneven. Even though they're pretty raggedy, this is the best I could do and overall, I'm quite happy with the way the ribs turned out. Next I can lay out the sheathing and start placing the ribs into position...I'm getting near the end!