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That is simply beautiful. But more detail please!

The old man does pretty nice work. Which reminds me, the stock for my new hybrid should be gluing up right about now . . .

Quote from pargo

How long did it reside on your wreck and was there a noticeable decrease in shootable fish?

It was only there for a month or so, but in that time, I never saw another fish of any kind. After seeing him on a few dives, one day he was gone, and the snapper and grouper and baitfish were back.

I've seen only three in the Pensacola area over the years. Two were deep inside wrecks in 90-100' of water and were probably over 250 lbs, I would guess, though I have no experience estimating the weights of such fish.

The third, though, caught me by surprise because it took up residence on one of our wrecks in Pensacola Bay for a while. I rounded the corner of a wreck in about 8' of hazy vis, and saw the front 1/3 of what I thought was a monster gag of 75-80 lbs sticking out of a hole in the wreck. Usually, when I see grouper in this posture, they are easy shots because they will exit the wreck and turn to go back in head first, momentarily presenting a solid broadside shot. I lined up, waiting for the fish to turn, but instead it came right towards me like a puppy waiting for a pat on the head. As it did, I noticed the round tail, and recognized what I was looking at.

Rule #1 - Always be sure of your target. Twice, I have almost made serious mistakes underwater because I encountered something that was so completely out of place that I didn't recognize it for what it was.

Great! I am hoping to get started on the core for the carbon fiber tube this week. I also have my trigger mech, and a rough cut blank of delrin started for the handle.

I knew you had a similar bender, but didn't know that you had had difficulty with it. What size pipe / tube were you bending, and did it flatten in the middle (at the jack), or on each side where the rollers go? Come to think of it, I used your old conduit bender for most of the boat stuff, but none of that flattened that I can remember.

I have witnessed the sand approach a few times, but the shop guys only did that for special applications. Typically thin tubes and tight radius bends. Very labor intensive.

I was down about 50' watching several hundred small (4-5') sharks, when I saw some thick-headed AJ's coming up from the depths. They came in to check me out - I pulled the trigger when this one was about 10 feet away. It was facing me, and had just started to quarter away. The shaft went in just behind his eye and came out somewhere around his anal fin. Basically skewered the long way. He didn't do much until I got him to the surface, at which point I could feel him flexing my shaft back and forth - a knife in the head ended that.

61" Enclosed track hybrid with 4 - 5/8" bands.

Here's a link to some video I shot a few minutes before swimming over to the rig and shooting the AJ.
YouTube - sharks2

I hit it just right, grabbed the shooting line and swam him up - good thing since I was in about 1200' of water.

I've only done a little tube bending, and that was mostly smaller stuff for handrails and a little cabin framing on our boat.

If the pipe / tubing is not particularly thin walled, (say greater than 1/8") and
If it is a typical pipe / tube alloy like 6061 or 6063, and
If the bend radius is a good 3 or 4 times the diameter

then I think that you will get much better results by not heating it. It will be hard to heat a section of tubing evenly, so it would tend to stretch more in some places than in others, and will be much more likely to flatten out instead of staying round through the bend.

Are you using alumium pipe, or tube? The diameters are different. For example, 1" pipe is actually about 1.3" in diameter, while 1" tubing is actually 1" in diameter.

Pipe benders are pretty cheap. A bender like this one might work for some sizes of tube. For example, the 1" pipe bending shoes would probably work for 1-1/4" tube.

http://www.harborfreight.com/c…item.taf?Itemnumber=38024

One problem with making a badly warped glue-up straight is that you would have then altered the internal stresses again, and need to hang it again to see if it warps again, and you might now be working with a blank that is smaller than you wanted.

Bug and a Scamp
2008, didn't weight either, but they made a great meal.

Here's a 22 pound red snapper
Shot in June, 2008

Here's a 96 pound AJ
shot in March of 2008.

I like it - by paying attention to all the small issues during the cutting and glue up process your not giving the wood a chance to warp. Are you keeping track of what percentage of them warp even slightly during the month of hanging - and how much they warp? You could make that data available to the buyer and he could decide whether or not he wanted to wait the month.

What jointer did you end up with? I too just got a big one and LOVE it.

Also, how's the boat coming?

Maybe a sketch will help.

He cuts the thin laminates from a much larger board. But first, he takes pains to make sure that the larger board is flat and straight, as in the first view, and not warped, as in the second. That way, the resulting laminates are straight in the "hard" direction, though after cutting they may bow slightly in the "easy" direction. He can remove bow in the "easy" direction by selecting laminates with similar amounts of bow, and aligning them in opposite directions so that they cancel each other out when glued up..

Quote from Wood Guy

I can't get a .005" feeler gauge under any of the blank while it's sitting on a straight edge . . .

:0 Holy smokes, that is straight! I take it you're happy with the new jointer!

Roberto,

Yes the shape is designed to reduce the issue of bands piling up. On the previous tuna hybrid I made it was an issue. I even had a problem getting my hands out of the way without having the wishbone want to come off the shark fin.

I've used the metal wishbones and like them - as you say the only limitation is 1 per tab. I wanted this gun to be able to work well with either type.

Careful if you do it like shown in the third pic of #24. Unless your stone is secured to the table, you will probably be holding the stone steady with your left hand, which means you are stroking the kife with the edge toward your hand. Switch the knife to your left hand, if you are coordinated enough to do so, or use some two-sided tape to temporarily stick your stone to the table.

I realize that we're all quite used to minding the pointy end of things, but why tempt fate?

It's called "polyfoam" float line and made by Novabraid. The best price I found was $26 for 300' of 3/8" or $36 for 300' of 1/2" at http://www.wallacecordage.com/polyfoam_floatline.htm.

Your google skills may be better than mine. Maybe it's available cheaper somewhere else.

Edit - They had 600' spools as well, but I forgot to check the prices.

They do this thing downtown here once a month where they have an outdoor market, and lots of the local artists display and sell their stuff. Anyway, there is this guy who sets up a booth sharpenning knives for a couple bucks each, and he has quite a following. I watched him for 15 minutes or so, and at least 10 people left all manner of knives for him to sharpen. He didn't use anything fancy. Just a small table set up with three different flat stones and a leather strap. But it was amazing to see how fast this guy could put a shaving edge on almost any blade. I definately want to go back sometime when I can watch him longer.