I bought 2 nice spruce planks from Russell. The keelson will come out of long one on the bottom. The top one was ripped into thin strips which were then glued together over a mold to form the stem.
Brandon cut the parts for the mold on his CNC machine.
Here is the assembled mold ready to take the first spruce strips. There were four separate gluing operations. The mold was covered with plastic packing tape to keep the stem from sticking to the mold.
I added plastic-covered guides (you can see one set between clamps 2 and 3 on the right) to keep the laminations from slipping sideways. Each laminate was coated with straight epoxy on both sides first. Then I went back and used a notched trowel to add a coat of thickened epoxy to each side of each lamination before clamping.
Here is the first lamination after the epoxy cured.
Gluing layer number 2
Layer 2 cured
Layer 3 doesn't need the full length of the mold.
After layer 3 cured, the whole thing was taken off the mold to glue on cheek blocks.
Finally, the assembly was spot glued back on to the mold ready for machining at Brandon's shop in Port Townsend.
The finished stem turned out nicely
A closeup showing a reference line that was machined at the same time as the part.
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