The woodfinder indicated that there were a handful of local places; I was also aware of another lumber-yard-like place that it didn't return. One Saturday, I stopped out at World of Hardwoods in Linthicum, MD. We spent a while talk about what I needed and in what lengths to have the least waste. For the Sea Flea, we/I determined that I needed 12' of a 1x6. Most of the local places that I called would have to order the WRC. The only place that had it was the lumber-yard-like place, J.F. Johnson Lumber, but they don't offer millwork and didn't have a table saw that I could use to cut it myself (note: not that I would have cut it myself!). After much debate, I ordered from FreeState Timbers in Timonium, MD. (As an aside- I would have gone with World of Hardwoods because they were so helpful, but FreeState was able to do the millwork for much less. I feel a little guilty about this decision!)
First things first, I took time to level up my strongback. That was kind of painful as my garage's floor is atrocious.
By this point, I still hadn't made the strongback stations to hold the first and last cross sections. Instead of following ANY of Tom's directions, I simply grabbed two scrap pieces of plywood. I cut them in the general "U"-like shape. I cut the center opening to be 13/16" because it's slightly larger than the keel at 3/4". I drew center lines on them and mounted each to a cut-down 5 1/2" piece of 2x4. Following Tom's directions, I got the strongback station aligned and screwed the whole assembly down to the strongback.
I took a moment to test fit the keel strip to each of the keel cutouts on the cross sections. I found that a couple of them wouldn't fit, so I used the file-side of my wood rasp and gentled filed little by little until I got a nice fit. I was quite a bit apprehensive, as the areas around the keel opening seems so narrow. Fortunately, nothing broke and soon I was ready to move on.
Next was to get cross sections 1 and 4 mounted to the stations. I initially wanted to avoid drilling through the cross section as Tom indicates in his instructions. I tried using cable ties to get a tight fit, but found that there was just a little too much give and I wasn't happen with how it was all holding. I made the decision that I was being stupid and screwed the cross section onto the strongback station - no fuss, no muss. (This left the screws poking out the back... I turned to man's second-best friend and threw some duck tape on the points. By looking closely at the photos, I now see that Tom seems to put a piece of wood back there and just screws into that.)
About this time, Paige came out to see what I was doing. She shouted, "Daddy it looks like a boat!" Quick as a flash, she ran inside and got boots on (shop rule, shoes are required). Together we put the chines on. At any given point, her jobs were to hold stringers in place, get the cable ties and finally to tighten the cable ties in place. We tightened all of the cable ties and stepped back to admire our handiwork:
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