Cozy Boat

Step 3 Peel Some Ribs

I made the two main ribs by cutting the rim of a papasan chair in half.
It's rattan, which is strong light stuff.
The other ribs are much thinner, willow shoots 6 or 7 feet long cut from a thicket. If they grow in the dark they get tall before branching. Then I tied them as seen here and let them dry for a bit. Danielle Smith is peeling the bark off these ribs with a vegetable peeler. "PLUR" written on her hand stands for "peace, love, unity, respect". You'll have to ask her why. The veggie peeler is the best way to take the bark off. If you wait too long the bark will get hard. If you do it too soon and don't oil the ribs enough they'll crack, which isn't really a problem.

The other lumber came from a company that makes wine racks. The lumber bundles they buy come wrapped with same-species tropical wood 20 feet long. I grabbed a bunch of that, ripped it thinner with a tablesaw and a thin-kerf blade, and rounded the edges off with router, plane, rounding plane, spokeshave, sandpaper, basically every tool I had. Router with quarter-round bit followed by hand sanding was fastest. Splinters while hand sanding were a major hazard.