Well the first thing to tell you is I think I found out what a chine is.
You see if a boat has a smooth curve to its hull from side to side not front to back it does not have chines. If it is put together with panels it will have angles at the joints. These I believe are the chines.
Sounds good to me. What do I really care. I just want to have a long pointy bucket that floats.
Sunday I went all around the boat with epoxy dabbing some here and there at the joints trying to tack the boat together so it could have the zip ties removed.
Monday I went and checked my results. Not so hot. Some of the places were bonded by many were not. So I moved to the next level and mixed up some epoxy with thickener. 3 squirts at a time. So I would not waste too much. And started trying to make some nice neat fillets (corner smoothing globs of goo) along the joints. This is not the easiest thing to do because you need it to be neat and you know everywhere that it dries that you don’t want it you are going to have to sand it away. That would be easy if the epoxy was not harder than the wood but it is so when you sand it you have to be careful not to sand through the plywood. I made a couple of spatula looking things to smooth it into the chines and they were pretty effective. They took about 10 seconds to shape on the sander. I used them to apply the epoxy and to smooth it out.
I thought previously that you did not put the fillet epoxy on until it was all tacked together and then you laid the fiberglass tape right on top of the fillet material. I think some people do it this way and others don’t. From what I can tell no 2 people have ever built a boat with the same technique. I think in the end success is based on how much epoxy you had to use to get your long pointy wooden bucket to float without leaking. Personally at this point I would be amazed if I finish this thing with just one gallon which sucks since as you can see over to the right they are not exactly giving this stuff away.
In the photos you see some after shots from adding some of the fillet material, the clippers that I have found very handy for clipping away zip ties. My spatula tools for applying epoxy. Some little V’s that I cut out to stick on the bottom of the front of the boat to squeeze those panels into place for gluing. The zip ties were just not cutting it. Finally there is a picture of the Respirator I have been using. It was $20 and I am real happy with it.
Hopefully tonight it will be held together better. If so I guess I will have some sanding to do to smooth the fillets. Then I will need to make some braces to replace the forms so that I can tape the inside seams of the boat. I need to find a better way to put on epoxy faster I think I may try some 2” foam brushes. So far I have just been using some ½” glue brushes but when I need to go 15’ 8” before the epoxy hardens that will not do
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