The BPX6 is in progress! Lots of work done this weekend so I’ll be breaking it up over a couple of posts over the week. I’m also planning to get a review of the Rockwell BladeRunner X2 up as well as a more in depth guide to making templates.
This party got started by using my hot new BladeRunner to rip cut a strip of whiteboard material to mark out my stringer template. The BladeRunner cut through this faster than Harrison Ford in a room full of Replicants (I had to, my wife is a SciFi fan).
Next was to measure out the template. I like to just measure out the bottom for my template so I can line things up with the deck side. The template will be used not only to make the stringer but also guides for the hotwire cutter. The stringer and guides need to line up after the stringer is embedded in foam, so I find it’s easier have a side to keep flush. I’m also not putting a ton of nose rocker in this board so that helps keep things simple. In measuring out the stringer, I add between 1/8 to 1/4″ extra to give myself some room for error and some wiggle room to shape later. With my guide points marked, I clamp down an oak dowel and bend it for a nice flowing curve that I mark out with my free hand.
Bending the dowel through the control points. 
Laying out the stringer template.
With the template marked, I used the BladeRunner to scroll cut it. I thought this might be a problem since it has an arm for the cutting guard that is inline with the blade but with a little practice I found that the material is flexible enough that it really isn’t a problem for the gradual curve of the stringer.
While I found that I was getting smoother cuts with the BladeRunner as opposed to using a jigsaw like I did with previous boards. The template still needed to be smoothed out with sanding. To make this easy, I clamped the stringer with a couple of 1×4″ boards I had laying around the shed in a vice.
With the template sanded, I traced it out on my stringer material. Because my stringer is black foam PVC, I used a gold marker to see the line easier. Then it was back to the BladeRunner to scroll cut the stringer. I quickly found that the black material was hard to see so I clamped a light onto the BladeRunner to help.
Getting creative to light the cut on the black stringer. 
Freshly cut stringer!
Once the stringer was cut, I smoothed it out similarly to the template. In this case, I sanded it together with the MDF hotwire guides I had also made (I’ll show those in a future post).
I then cut my foam piece to length and then cut it in half. I turn the machine cut sides towards the inside to have a nice flush edge to put the stringer on. Before gluing in the stringer, I sanded the foam and the stringer to make sure I get a nice bonding surface. Once sanded, I glue one side at a time with Gorilla Glue.
Clamping the first side after gluing 
A nicely glued stringer!
Gorilla glue foams which can cause your stringer to slide around. I ended up clamping to the stringer itself at first and then baby sitting it until the foaming calmed down a little. Then I made final adjustments, place the top board on, clamped that down and went to bed.
The next day, everything looked good so I glued up the other half. I thought I was being super clever by weighing down the foam to keep everything lined up while I was clamping it. It was clever, what was really stupid was not setting the whole thing on its edge after it was clamped.
So if you haven’t guessed it already, the problem with leaving it this way was that when the glue foamed up and out, it glued the blank to the table. I had to get really creative with a saw but I managed to get it off with no real damage to anything but my pride.