Screw-you Yankee Workshop!

So I was doing some brainstorming today about how to finish my bow and stern with stem pieces ( probably with Jatoba, a really hard purple Brazillian cherry ) and how I'd finish the keel when I run out of Spanish cedar, which will be soon. I saw that the New Yankee Workshop with Norm Abram was on and thought I'd get some inspiration. They still show it a lot on PBS even though it's only reruns now, it ran from 1989 to 2009. There was an interesting bit where he made a jig to make a long angled cut with his tablesaw...

But the whole show was totally ridiculous. Even the guys I know that have enormous home woodshops don't have the tools at this guy's disposal, and probably some professional shops would love to have some of this stuff. It still took him 2 days to churn out a crappy table even though he's got drill presses, band saws, table jointers, mortise chisel presses and what looked like at least 2 industrial table saws. Even the mitre-saw he used had like a 20 foot extension on either side with perfectly measured out stops. How about some tips for how you'd do this without 30K $ worth of equipment and 2000 sq foot of floor space?

That's all well and good. I guess if I had a 20 year show and an annual budget for tools that was probably 5 figures, I might get a little lazy too. But then this jerk goes to attach the base of his table, and makes a big deal about how smart he is for not lining up the bias of his joints, but doesn't center it before attaching it! By the end of the episode he was polishing a table that was clearly off-center. For some reason I found this offensive. Maybe it's because us Joe's have to make do with a 40 year old hand jig saw and a 20$ table router to build a freaking boat.

Don't be discouraged from starting this project on your own though, those tools were really the most heavy duty things I needed for this project. Mostly I'm using a razor saw, sandpaper, glue and a staple-gun. Meanwhile looking at this guy's project gives me both inspiration and a feeling like I'm a curious george run amok with some wood-glue.