Brian,
Starting to make some progress, I finished fairing the bottom (finally) and have most of my strakes and spray rails cut. I bought rough sawn Sapele 5/4 and planed it down to 1". I planned on putting on the fairbody strake in 2 layers on the bow knee but I saw a video on steam bending (
tips from a shipwright video). So I start thinking.
Then I look into steam bending and discover that Sapele is not a good wood for steam bending.... ****
I decide to give it a try on a scrap piece 1.5" wide x 1" thick maybe 7' long. I converted a crab cooker pot lid, added a 1" hose barb and a vent that I can open to add water. I screwed metal strapping to the outside of the "bend" under tension I used a continuous roll of plastic tube and just put it over the area that would be receiving the bend and maybe 1' past on each side and just wrapped tape to seal it up and fed the steam from the middle. I cut a snip at each end of the tubing to let the steam out and steamed it for just over an hour.
I just had a makeshift bench with some blocks screwed down for a jig and I thought it would be difficult to bend but it was quite easy to do, just clamped it on and let the steam go for another 15 minutes and shut everything down. To my surprise it only sprung back a little once removed from the form.
I am going to bend in place the fairbody strake and if all goes well I will do the splash rails in place also.
Just a note on the thickness, I was going to apply 2 layers on the splash rails 3/4 + 3/8 but if I can do this in 1 layer why not just apply the 1" spray rail and call it done? Not much of a difference. I am attaching a couple pics and I may post a short video in a bit for entertainment purposes only.