Shelter Island Boat Works

The Coquina has partial 3/4″ x 1/2″ frames. The recommendation was to make them from mahogany or locust. Since I have many locust trees on my property and locust is well known to be rot resistant, strong, and easily steam bent I decided to mill some of my own lumber. My trees are Honey Locust, not Black Locust, so I knew there would be quite a few knots to work around.

I had a well dried 4 foot length of 8″ diameter locust I had saved from an earlier cutting. It was relatively straight and had few knots. I decided to start with this.

I got a small Granberg Chainsaw mill to attach to my small chain saw. I set the depth of cut for 1 1/2″. It did take some time to cut through but I was able to get the first two slabs to come out quite level and smooth.

Leveling cut. Chainsaw with milling attacment in the backfround.

I took the rough cut slabs and smoothed them down with a planer and trimmed square with the table saw.

Two boards – one dressed and one rough cut.

I needed to cut around some of the grain (one slab has a center core) which is not be good for steam bending.

Then it was a simple matter to cut them down to size. I was surprised at how many I got from just two small slabs, even with culling the bad grain.

Now, on to steaming. But first, I had to build a steam box!