Sanding and gluing

We had hoped that this would be the day to get the hulls ready for stitching but that was not to be. The day started with a trip to the store for 80 grit sandpaper and sanding the insides of the hulls.

The sanding seemed to take forever, but by lunch time all the hull panels were done.

Finally time to start gluing!! We cut up some scrap pieces of spruce from my oar project to make drywall screw clamps. the bottoms get a piece of tape to release from the epoxy. You definitely want to make sure you have enough ready BEFORE you start gluing.

The gluing surfaces, including the butt block, get a coat of raw epoxy. Once the epoxy went tacky we mixed up epoxy with milled glass and silica to mayonnaise consistency and slathered up the butt blocks.

Here it is clamped in place with the screws and wood clamping washers. I later added a spring clamp here and there to help along the edges.

It looks like everything is flush, we'll see when the screws come out tomorrow. I've learned my lesson about waiting too long to scrape off the excess glue, so I'll be checking in regularly to see when they are ready.

We only had time to do two hull panels, so from now on one hull may be a step ahead of the other.