OK, it’s not cool enough for a warm wool scarf, but it’s always perfect weather for a scarf joint! A scarf joint is usually used to make a piece of wood longer when you don’t have access to a wood stretcher. It’s a long ‘ramp’ shaped cut that matches an opposing identical but opposite ‘ramp’ on the added piece of wood. These are usually a minimum 8 inches of length for every 1 inch of thickness in the joint, or an 8:1 ratio in whatever units you prefer. Sometimes ,in boat repair, you need to make a scarf joint in unusual places which adds to the challenge. The pictures below show plywood scarf joints in the middle of a panel of plywood planking. This is done on some 1/4″ plywood, and I couldn’t quite get the 8:1 ratio in the second picture, but I think it’ll be fine.
This next picture shows that you sometimes have to be creative when it comes to clamping things on boats. Most boats tend to be curvy and have almost no right angles, so sometimes cutting the challenging joint is the easy part. I have some strips of wood fastened to the keel and a pipe clamp pulling down from the rubrail and putting pressure on the joint while the glue cures. This stuff certainly isn’t rocket science, but it does keep the old gears turning.
