It turns out that I did a poor job with the epoxy so I had a lot of sanding to do to get ready for adding the tape to the canoe. I thought I was mixing the epoxy thick enough but that was not the case. It was more like Jelly than Peanut butter so it ran and made a mess. Remember when you use epoxy the sooner the better on clean up. Once it hardens it is a bitch to remove. So I worked a couple of nights sanding and have finally smoothed everything out enough to do the taping of the inside seams. I would think if you were good with the epoxy this could be a 1 hour sanding rather than 4-6.
My big problem is that my thickener really darkened my epoxy and I think that when I put on the tape and cover everything in a layer of plain epoxy it is going to look really bad. If that is the case I will paint both the inside and out but if it looks ok I will just paint the outside. I don’t see how some miracle could take place when I put epoxy everywhere and it will suddenly be beautiful so I am really planning on painting at this point.
After doing all of the sanding I am quite unimpressed with how well the joints have come out. I don’t know if drilling my holes closer to the edges of the plywood would have helped top hold the pieces in place better or not. I was concerned that the zip ties would rip through the plywood if the holes were too close to the edge but I think in retrospect they would had held better if they were closer. Unless I build another boat I will never know.
I added some pictures of some sanding disks I tried out for the sanding. They are metal and I thought that they would last longer. They were no good for this job at all. In the end I used the 60 grid disk on a Dewalt Oscillating sander and it worked well.
I’ll send more pictures from the taping process
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