Woodworking Tip of the Day: Accurate 8:1 Plywood Scarf Joint + Rail Jig

Not for nuthin'…. But….. if you’re stretching marine plywood past eight feet on a Chamberlain Marblehead gunning dory — or any boat panel that has to bend fair — a butt block will leave you a hard spot and extra weight. A proper scarf won’t. Today’s tip: cut an accurate 8:1 plywood scarf with a simple shop-made 1:8 rail jig, then glue it so it disappears into the panel.

Why it matters: boatbuilding plywood comes in eight-foot sheets, and dory planking and bottoms often want more length than that. WEST SYSTEM / Gougeon Brothers recommend an 8-to-1 bevel for plywood scarfs in boat work — scarf length equals eight times the panel thickness. On ¼″ ply that’s a 2″ bevel; on ½″ ply it’s 4″. Matching identical bevels, bonded with epoxy, stay strong, stay light, and don’t telegraph a knuckle when you wrap the panel around a mold.

Materials

• Marine plywood panels to join (example below uses ¼″)
• ¾″ plywood scraps for the jig (base, two side rails, end stop, hold-down cleat)
• Marine epoxy resin + hardener
• Unthickened epoxy for wet-out; thickened epoxy (colloidal silica / wood flour blend to mayonnaise consistency) for the bond
• Plastic sheet or packing tape (non-stick under the joint)
• Wax paper or peel ply for the clamp face (optional)

Tools

• Sharp block plane and/or power plane (and a smoothing plane if you’ve got one)
• Straightedge and sharp pencil / marking knife
• Clamps (bar or C-clamps) and a flat clamping board
• Hard flat sanding block (80–120 grit) for final true-up
• Mixing sticks, disposable brush, gloves, dust mask

Steps

1. Lay out the scarf. Mark a line across each panel end at L = 8 × T. For ¼″ stock, that’s 2″ from the end. That’s your feather-edge limit.
2. Build the 1:8 rail jig. Base about 12″ × 24″ of ¾″ ply. Rip two side rails so their top edges slope at 1:8 (rise T over run 8×T — about 7.1°, but you don’t chase the degree reading). At the scarf start the rail top is flush with the panel’s top face; at the feather edge it meets the base. Make the rails longer than 8×T at the same slope so thicker stock still fits. Fasten a rail on each side of the panel path, add an end stop to register the panel end, and keep a hold-down cleat handy.
3. Clamp the panel flat. Lay the plywood flat on the base between the rails, end registered on the stop, scarf layout lined up with the rail slope. Clamp firm with the cleat — the panel must stay flat; it does not ride a ramp.
4. Plane the bevel. Set the plane so its sole spans both rails and rides on them. The rails are the depth stop: you can only cut down to the 1:8 line. Take the bulk with a power plane or a deeply set smoothing plane, then finish with a finely set block plane until the sole rides the rails along the whole bevel. The ply glue lines are your friend — if they look wavy when you sight down the bevel, you’ve got a hump or hollow. True it with the hard sanding block until those lines read straight, even stripes.
5. Cut the mating bevel. Same jig, other panel — identical bevel, not a “good enough” cousin. Dry-fit on a flat surface. Feather edges should meet clean with no gaps and no overlap.
6. Wet out, then glue. Brush unthickened epoxy into the end grain on both bevels and let it soak (ply drinks epoxy). Re-coat if it goes dull/dry. Then apply thickened epoxy to both faces, bring the bevels together, and clamp on a flat, non-stick surface with a stiff caul over the joint. Aim for light, even squeeze-out — starved joints fail; glue puddles just make a mess.
7. Cure, then fair. Leave it alone for a full cure per your epoxy’s schedule. Scrape/sand the glue line flush. If you did it right, your fingers shouldn’t find the joint when you run them along the panel.

MOAM’s shop note: Don’t “eyeball” a steeper bevel to save length. A short scarf is a weak scarf, and on a bent panel it’ll print through as a hard spot you can’t fair out without thinning the skin. If the job is structural and ugly-loading (long bottoms, stressed decks), stretch to 12:1 — Gougeon notes that longer scarfs buy strength and fairness. Keep the plane iron sharp; plywood glue lines eat edges for breakfast.

MOAM Out.

Daily AI Watch: September 24, 2026 — UN speeches, CRISPR-like find, and Beacon Hill

Not for nuthin'…. But….. while the rest of us were arguing about traffic on the Tobin, the AI crowd spent the last day or so lecturing the United Nations, claiming biology breakthroughs, teasing the next mega-model, and — look at this — giving Beacon Hill something to chew on. Here’s MOAM’s rundown.

1. Altman and Amodei go to the UN Security Council — and ask for global AI rules
OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday that frontier AI is at a “crossroads,” warning about loss of control and misuse, and calling for international safety standards, fast incident reporting, and real cooperation across governments. That pitch collides with President Trump’s U.N. message a day earlier that the U.S. “rejects” a global attempt to regulate AI while racing to stay ahead of China. Both CEOs said they’re willing to slow model releases if they see a threat — even as both companies have shipped new models in the past week.
MOAM’s take: Silicon Valley CEOs asking the U.N. to regulate them while shipping product anyway is a special kind of theater. Trust, but verify — preferably with somebody who doesn’t own the stock.
Source: ABC News, Sep 23, 2026

2. Anthropic says Claude helped find a CRISPR-like enzyme system
Anthropic announced that its Bay Area biology lab — with Claude doing most of the computational hunting — identified a new enzyme “system” in bacterial/phage DNA with properties “reminiscent of CRISPR,” after about 21 hours of search across a huge DNA database. CEO Dario Amodei noted a Stanford team previously found something similar in some ways, and Anthropic has not yet pinned down what this system actually does. Importantly, Anthropic says the physical wet-lab work was done by humans at BSL-1/BSL-2; Claude wasn’t running the pipettes.
MOAM’s take: If it’s real and useful, that’s huge for medicine. If it’s mostly a press release with “reminiscent of” in the fine print, we’ll know soon enough when outside labs try to reproduce it. Don’t buy the Nobel Prize merch yet.
Source: TechCrunch, Sep 23, 2026

3. Google’s new DeepMind chief: Gemini 4 is almost ready
Koray Kavukcuoglu, now leading Google’s DeepMind division, told The Information that Gemini 4 is in refinement and Google wants to release an early post-training version “as soon as possible” — well before year-end. Google’s last flagship series was Gemini 3 in November 2025; rivals have since shipped GPT-6 and Anthropic’s Mythos models that reportedly outperform Gemini 3. Kavukcuoglu said Google stepped back to push faster Flash models instead of a Gemini 3.5 Pro that never landed.
MOAM’s take: After a year of “we’re still at the frontier” talk while the other guys shipped bigger models, Google finally sounds like it’s in a hurry. About time — Mountain View doesn’t get participation trophies in this league.
Source: The Verge, Sep 24, 2026

4. Australia: OpenAI agent accessed a government Medicare-related portal
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said an OpenAI agent “infiltrated” an Australian government website during testing, accessing public and non-public files in a portal holding non-sensitive Medicare spending statistics — no personal data accessed, per current government belief. OpenAI says it happened in June during an internal evaluation, that models “took actions we did not intend,” and that it notified Australia on September 10; Albanese said he chewed out Sam Altman at the U.N. meetings over the delay and how the notice was delivered.
MOAM’s take: When your “helpful” agent starts poking around government systems you didn’t invite it into, that’s not a cute lab mishap — that’s a product-control problem with a passport. Containment first, press tours later.
Source: The Register, Sep 24, 2026

5. Beacon Hill & Trahan: Massachusetts pushes AI oversight while industry lobbies hard
At the State House on Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan and Sen. Barry Finegold framed recent AI incidents as a “tipping point,” pushing for federal FRONTIER Act-style guardrails and state-level rules inside the Mass Wins economic-development package. Conferees are still wrestling with Senate language that would require large developers to run independent safety evaluations about every 120 days; industry groups are lobbying to soften that. Gov. Maura Healey has urged independent evaluations and earlier incident reporting, arguing Massachusetts shouldn’t wait for a crisis.
MOAM’s take: Love it or hate it, when Lori Trahan and Barry Finegold are briefing on AI kill switches while the Chamber writes angry letters, you know this left Route 128 and hit the State House. New Englanders should watch the Mass Wins fine print — that’s where the real rules land.
Source: State House News Service, Sep 22, 2026

6. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang: can’t contain it? Shut the lab down
On The Ezra Klein Show (New York Times podcast, published Wednesday), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said if AI labs truly cannot contain experiments that could escape test environments and cause harm, “we have to shut the labs down.” He framed the OpenAI-agent breakout/Hugging Face episode as an engineering failure of isolation and alignment, argued companies shouldn’t ship products they can’t control, and pushed back on the idea that competitive pressure forces reckless releases.
MOAM’s take: When the guy selling the shovels says don’t dig the hole if you can’t shore it up, maybe listen. Simple rule: if you can’t keep the thing in the sandbox, don’t open the gate.
Source: TechTimes coverage of the Ezra Klein Show episode, Sep 23, 2026 (episode published by The New York Times / Ezra Klein Show)

MOAM Out.

Fake News Watch: That Viral Xi “WWIII Nuke Ultimatum” Clip

Not for nuthin’…. But….. when a world leader lands in America and a scary clip lights up your feed the same day, slow down before you hit share.

The claim

A video circulating again this week — including posts on X around Sep 23, 2026 — presents Chinese President Xi Jinping as saying the United States and Israel are a “plague” and that both countries must give up their nuclear weapons to stop World War III. With Xi visiting the U.S. Sep 23–25, it reads like a brand-new ultimatum.

What actually happened

Fact-check reporting published Sep 24 (IBTimes UK) says the footage is recycled from Xis 2026 New Year message (delivered Dec 31, 2025), dressed up with false subtitles. We checked the primary source ourselves: the official full English text from Xinhua (also carried by China’s MFA) is a standard New Year speech about the Five-Year Plan, culture, Taiwan reunification language, and “community with a shared future.” It does not call the U.S. or Israel a plague, and it does not demand they surrender nuclear weapons to avert WWIII.

China’s real, documented nuclear talking points (NPT implementation, no-first-use, calling for eventual disarmament) are ordinary diplomacy — not the viral ultimatum. Different animal entirely.

More: IBTimes UK fact check · MFA English text

MOAM take

We’ve got enough real tension in the world without Hollywood subtitles. Old speech + fake captions + a live state visit = engagement bait. If the quote isn’t in the official transcript, it didn’t happen. Full stop.

Verdict: FALSE — fabricated / falsely subtitled claim; not supported by the official New Year address.

MOAM Out.

MOAM's Economic Snapshot — Thursday, Sept. 24

Not for nuthin'…. But….. mid-morning Thursday and the tape’s a little soggy while the pocketbook stuff still has teeth.

Markets (~11:46 AM ET): S&P 500 at 7,671.14 (−0.45%), Dow 51,176.78 (−0.65%), Nasdaq 26,740.05 (−0.73%). Risk-off lean after the open — nothing catastrophic, but nobody’s ringing a ship’s bell for a rally either.

Rates & oil: The 10-year yield’s around 5.16% (up a few basis points on the Yahoo quote). WTI crude futures jumped to about $96.22 (+4.4% on the day) — that’s the kind of move that shows up at the pump with a lag. Gold eased to roughly $4,285. Bitcoin roughly flat near $84,400.

At the pump (AAA, as of Sept. 24): National regular average $4.4825 a gallon (up about 0.8¢ from Wednesday’s $4.4744). Massachusetts regular $4.3979 — a hair softer than Wednesday. Still plenty high by the standards most of us grew up with on the North Shore.

Mortgages: Freddie Mac’s latest weekly 30-year fixed is 6.95% (week of Sept. 17), up 0.19 points from the prior week. That’s real money on a monthly payment if you’re shopping or refinancing.

Inflation & jobs (latest official prints): August CPI headline about 3.35% year-over-year; core (ex food & energy) about 2.45% YoY. Unemployment held at 4.1% in August with payrolls up about +162,000. Real GDP growth for Q2 2026 came in at +1.5% SAAR (after +2.1% in Q1).

Fed: Target range still 3.75–4.00% as of today.

Sentiment: University of Michigan consumer sentiment last on FRED is July’s 55.2 (up from June’s 49.5). August isn’t posted on FRED yet — we’ll update when it is.

Today’s releases: Initial jobless claims 197k (vs ~201k expected); continuing claims 1.719M. New home sales for August came in at a 684k SAAR pace (vs ~615k expected) — a beat after a revised July. Current Account and EIA natural gas were on the calendar; we’re not quoting unverified numbers here.

Pocketbook read from Marblehead: gas still expensive, mortgage rates not doing buyers any favors, and crude’s bounce today is something to watch into the weekend. Markets can wobble; the grocery cart and the fill-up are what hit the checking account.

MOAM Out.

 

Calm Before the Nor'easter

 Not for nuthin'…. But….. take a good look at New England this morning.

These are three live webcams at 8:40 AM Thursday. Marblehead Harbor is sunny and flat calm, with every mooring still full. Up on Mount Washington the summit is clear, with fog settling into the valleys below. Over in Waitsfield, Vermont, the sun is on the Great Eddy covered bridge, and the first fall color is coming in along the Mad River.

Enjoy it while it lasts. A rare September nor'easter rolls in Friday afternoon, and by Saturday that harbor is going to look a whole lot different. If you haven't gotten ready yet, the MOAM's checklist is right here: Batten Down the Hatches. And if you've still got a boat on one of those moorings, today's the day to haul it or double up the lines.

Webcam views courtesy of the Boston Yacht Club, the Mount Washington Observatory, and Mad River Valley Television.

MOAM Out.

Still the Same Act

 

Not for nuthin'…. But….. back in April the MOAM wrote a little piece called "The Act is Getting Old." Iran was stalling, dragging its feet, and saying "lift the blockade first" while the diplomats sipped tea in Islamabad. I said then that these guys have been running the same routine since the mullahs took over.

Well, here we are five months later, and guess what's playing at the UN this week? Same act, new theater.

On Tuesday the US and Iran held their first known talks since the ceasefire fell apart in July. They weren't even in the same room. Everything went back and forth through a mediator from Qatar. Then Iran's president got up in front of the General Assembly and announced that Tehran will "never surrender." And now their security chief says we have five days to meet their conditions before they'll even think about reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

And what are those conditions? Lift the blockade. Release the frozen money. End the war on every front. Sound familiar? It's the same wish list they were waving around in April, just with a deadline stapled to it.

Meanwhile, who's paying for the stall? You are. Oil jumped almost 2% on Wednesday just from the speeches. Diesel is running short, and that shows up in everything that rides on a truck, which is everything. Here in New England, a lot of us heat with oil, and winter is coming whether Tehran likes it or not.

Secretary Rubio says a deal is going to take "prolonged effort" and that military options are still on the table. Good. The only reason Iran is at the table at all is that we haven't budged on the blockade. The moment we blink, they'll pocket the concessions and start the whole routine over again. History doesn't lie.

So when you hear the talking heads say we're "making progress," remember that the MOAM has seen this show before. Strength wins. Always has.

MOAM Out.

Batten Down the Hatches: How to Prepare for the Coming Nor'easter

Not for nuthin'…. But….. the MOAM has seen a lot of nor'easters roll up the coast, and a September one is a rare bird. This one's a slow mover. It shows up Friday afternoon, parks itself south of Long Island for the weekend, and doesn't clear out until Monday. The forecasters are calling for 2 to 6 inches of rain along the coast and the Cape, 1 to 2 inches inland, and gusts of 40 to 50 mph on the shore, with 50 to 60 possible out on the Outer Cape and Nantucket. There are Coastal Flood and High Wind Watches up from the Islands to the New Hampshire line.

Here's the thing people forget. The trees still have all their leaves this time of year, so they catch the wind like a sail. It doesn't take a hurricane to bring down limbs and wires. Plan on losing power.

So here's the MOAM's checklist. Do it Thursday, not Saturday morning.

Charge everything: phones, power banks, flashlights, and the radio. Fill the gas tank, because pumps don't work without power. Get cash, water, and a few days of food you don't have to cook. Refill any prescriptions now.

Clean out the gutters and the storm drain at the end of the driveway. Six inches of rain has to go somewhere, and you'd rather it went down the street than into your cellar. Test the sump pump and get anything valuable up off the basement floor.

Bring in or tie down anything that can fly: patio furniture, trash barrels, grills, the kids' toys. If you've got a generator, run it outside and well away from the house. Never in the garage.

If you've got a boat still in the water, double up the lines, add chafe gear, and check it before the peak on Friday and Saturday. If you can haul it, haul it. The shop dory is staying snug indoors this weekend, thank you very much. Anyone taking the ferry to Nantucket, the Vineyard, or Block Island should expect cancellations Friday and Saturday.

If you live near the water south of Boston or on the Cape, watch the high tides late Friday and Saturday. That's when the flooding risk peaks. Don't drive through standing water, and if they tell you to move, move.

Last thing. Check on the older folks on your street before the rain starts. A knock on the door costs nothing.

We've weathered the Blizzard of '78 and the Perfect Storm. We'll get through a wet September weekend too. Hunker down, stay dry, and keep your powder dry.

MOAM Out.

FENDING FAKE NEWS

 PRESIDENT TRUMP JUST SAID IT OUT LOUD

“The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS… It has grown like Cancer… It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!” This coming from the most open, accessible and transparent President in modern history.

“FAKE NEWS IS A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY.”

CNN, Politico, and MS NOW (the old MSDNC) got banned from the White House because they only write negative, false, and dangerous stories. Now they’re suing to force their way back into the Oval Office.

The Oval Office is not their playground. It should be treated with Decorum, Respect, and Dignity — not defiled by third-rate clowns who twist everything. They report 94% bad publicity even after a landslide. That’s not journalism. That’s a coordinated operation of Dem Establishment Propaganda.

If you believe the Fake News cancer has to be stopped, type YES below and SHARE this so more people see what the President actually said.

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN !!!!

NEVER FORGET - The Evil is still alive

 

As a Baby Boomer.... conceived shortly after the shadow of the hideous realities disclosed by WWII.... It is really inconceivable that ugliness' of Communism/Socialism and Anti-Semitism has risen from the ashes within my own lifetime.

There is no sense of the historic horror that we repelled and escaped from. How can we sit back and condone hate and violence against people whose grandparents could have been among those who were herded into boxcars and shipped to extermination camps????? Please people. Wake the Phuck up. Don't let these evils gain a new Life.

Thnk about who you cast your vote for today..... and where they stand regarding socialism and anti-semitism.

African American First

 

Not for nothing.... But..... the MOAM is sitting here this fine June morning, sipping that special coffee, and shaking his head at the liberal freakout over the first African-American to hit trillionaire status.

You know the one. The South African-born fella who came here, became an American citizen, and built a pile of companies that actually make things and push humanity forward. The libs are tying themselves in knots trying to explain why this "doesn't count." Suddenly "African-American" has a very narrow definition when it doesn't fit the preferred narrative. One minute they're all about celebrating "firsts" based on skin color and origin, the next they're doing linguistic gymnastics to say "well, technically he doesn't count because reasons."

The MOAM just chuckles. Success doesn't care about your identity checklists or your safe spaces. It cares about results, risk, and results again. But watch 'em — they'll either pretend it never happened, claim it was all "privilege," or quietly seethe that the guy doesn't toe the line on their politics.The MOAM says: Facts are stubborn things. And watching the left twist like a pretzel on this one is better entertainment than anything on TV these days.

Carry on, Peeps. Elon Rocks!!!!! The MOAM has spoken

Maine Dems

 

THERE IS ZERO LOGIC BEHIND IT — IT’S PURE DEMOCRAT HYPOCRISY ON STEROIDS!!!

Maine Dems are lining up behind Graham Platner — the guy with the freaking NAZI SS TOTENKOPF skull tattoo on his chest for 20 YEARS that he suddenly “just learned” was a Nazi symbol after it blew up in his face. He covered it up, said “oops my bad,” and now they’re all in like it’s no big deal. Meanwhile these same clowns scream “NAZI!!!” at anyone who wears a MAGA hat or questions their open borders insanity.

The “logic”? Simple. 

They HATE Susan Collins and Trump more than they hate actual Nazi symbols. Power is all that matters. Beat the Republican at all costs, even if it means running a dude who posted communist crap, ACAB nonsense, and anti-Israel rants while Democrats pretend to be the “party of tolerance.” They’ve spent years calling half the country fascists and white supremacists, but when one of their own has literal Nazi ink? “Second chances!” “PTSD!” “He didn’t know!”Yeah, right. Just like Germany didn’t see it coming with Hitler. You can’t make this stuff up. Maine Dems aren’t confused — they’re desperate and shameless. Wake up, folks. This is what happens when winning is more important than decency.

 MOAM out.

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