Before I could finish the floorboards I needed to put some supports under the thwarts. I don't have too many pictures of that part but it basically entailed transferring some measurements from the placement of the seats (thwarts) down to the keel. Then I drilled for a dowel at the keel and the bottom of the seat and mounted three 1 1/2" round poplar rods which I will stain a darker color than the cedar.
Once the supports were in place I decided I didn't like the look of the big gap in the floorboards so I measured the central floorboards and set up the jig below to get a nice round hole that would also leave an aesthetic space between the boards and the hole around the dowel support. Check my jig set up below.
As you can see I marked where I wanted the hole and placed my two central floorboards on either side of a spare piece of planking I had left over from stripping the boat. Then I cut it out with a hole saw.
Here they are temporarily set up around the supports to check for fit.
You could just use long one piece floor boards for your boat but then it would be difficult to remove them for inspection at a later date without also removing the thwarts so I made my floorboards meet up at one of the floor braces which I made extra wide for this purpose. Here they are just set in place to have a look below.
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