"Handing" the Topside

One of the important aspects of building a boat is getting the heights or freeboard correct on either side.  This can be very difficult a task because we build each side and then try to line them up as best we can.  One way that we found to make this process just slightly easier is called handing.  This is when you need to make 2 or more pieces the exact same but instead of drawing, cutting, planing and whatever else you can simply fasten the pieces together and draw, cut and plane once. We learned this technique the hard way because we only handed the strakes, not the garboard.  Because we didnt had the garboard we had to somehow go back and plane off the uneven bits that were left on the bottom of the boat.  I will post more on this later.