Building a better leeboard (p2)

I haven't posted in a while, but work on a new leeboard for 'The Rise' has been continuing in the background. When I posted last, the 'board was still a raw piece of Spanish Cedar lumber. Turning it into a functional piece of marine hardware has been a learning process so far (and I'm still not quite done). Trent and I stayed late a couple days at work to get through the first few steps which required power tools. Unfortunately that means I don't have any pictures to post of the process.
To make a long story short, we:

1. Cut the raw lumber into two pieces the length of the finished board plus extra to trim later
2. Flattened two adjacent sides of each board (one side, one face) using a jointer.
3. Ripped each board on a table saw to the desired max thickness of the foil. We got three sticks out of each board, all of which were about 1+3/8" by 1+7/8". 
4. Carefully ripped down the last face on the sticks to ensure it was perpendicular to the rest.
5. Stacked together the six sticks would make a single laminated blank (imagine a wooden cutting board or workbench) about 1+3/8" by 11+1/4," perfect for a 12% thick airfoil. We swapped every other stick end for end so the finished blank would resist twisting and cupping, and selected the final position of each stick.
6. Ripped the outer sticks (which would form the leading edge (LE) and trailing edge (TE)) in half.
7. Laid up two layers of glass tape and Marinepoxy between the top and bottom of the LE and TE sticks to establish a precise centerline and (for the TE at least) give it some internal structure that would allow us to precisely shape the sharp trailing edge. 
8. Glued together the whole stack using Marinepoxy and wood flour filler. Trent and I hadn't used wood flour before but it was pleasant to work with and didn't scream 'carcinogen' like cabosil filler does. The filled epoxy looked like caramel sauce but was about a mayonnaise consistency. The thickened epoxy was really helpful to keep it from running all over the place while assembling the stack. We built the stack vertically (so the epoxy joints were horizontal), buttering up both sides of every joint before adding each new stick to the pile. It took about eight clamps to hold the stack tight overnight.

When we finished step 8 we had a solid roughly rectangular blank of wood which would eventually become a foil. More info (and pictures) to follow in the next post.

As a parting note, Duckworks Boat Builders Supply sponsored Team RAF in our Everglades Challenge entry in 2007 with Marinepoxy resin and other supplies. They have great deals on all kinds of boat building supplies. All the supplies used in this build came from their Basic Small Boat Epoxy Kit.