The stem has spent two days in the clamps, it is time to free it and begin cleaning it up.
The two boards were glued together with the bad parts biased towards the outside, that way when the finished stem is shaped up, the bad parts will be trimmed off. You can see a significant step in the two faces where a knot is present. This will be facing the inside of the hull, but the knot will be cut out. The other knot at the bottom of the stem will be cut off entirely.
To trim off the excess glue as well as clean up the sides, I setup the band saw to cut just a hair off the faces. Setting the rip fence a few millimeters away from the blade would ensure that minimal wood is wasted while producing a clean and even face.
After running the stem through the band saw, all the glue and uneven wood was removed, leaving a very clean timber with bookmatched grain to best support the stresses exerted on the stem.
