dogbrain

It doesn't look bad at all. My boats look the same at that stage. Most of the shiny vs dull will be gone after a couple coats of...

I think others here do it like this. I do both stems first; a bias cut strip and a small panel in the tight stem area to get the hard...

It looks like alder to me, but a clear board 22"x14' would be unusual from my experience. I used some for thwarts on a really light...

You could eliminate the center station to narrow it down a little. Mark