The steam engine is being painted and assembled for the 'final' time. It will obviously be disassembled as necessary to fix things, but at this point it won't be entirely disassembled again. I got a CNC router that will cut the name into mahogany for the side. You can see the test cuts getting done in the image below.
Additionally, the front is almost visually complete, aside from cleats and chocks. Most of the stain and spar varnish has been applied so you are essentially looking at the finished front deck. In the photo below you can see the black stripe running down the port side, with the original unstained mahogany color still visible to starboard. Originally this stripe was not intended, however, due to the difficulty of steam bending mahagony that is 5" wide, we cut into strips and then came up with the dark stripe to make the joints between wood look intentional. Just one of those things that only the builders (and the iboats forums!) will know.
We will be cutting the sharp curves on the stern of the boat with the CNC router since we cannot bend mahogany to the radius required. From there we will have the entire top deck stained and complete.
