After my last scarfs I didn't want to do any more. But having made successful ones gives you a certain confidence to make more. So I set out to add some width to my side planking pieces with a lengthwise scarf. Ironically, the reason I ripped the plywood into smaller widths was to avoid having to make a 4ft wide scarf joint that lined up well enough to be strong. So this one is about 5ft long and was actually less time consuming to make. I used the power planer for the rough shape. I bough the thing for my first scarfing adventure, but I was too afraid of ruining the expensive plywood to use it for much of the actual shaping. You really have to trust that it's only shaving off 1/32nd of an inch at a time as it grinds the edge into fine shavings. The trade-off is that the power planer is much faster than a random orbital sander and a pack of 60-grit sandpaper. I used the sander to touch up and remove any step edges left over, but this was much shorter than making the whole scarf. That extra makes the side planking fit just right. Well, close anyway, and probably much better after some hours of fitting. I also dug out the pieces I cut for bottom battens and cut them to size. Here is the latest look.
