Day 19 - first fill coat

No pictures today. Following a night of curing, I trimmed up the fiberglass cloth hanging from the hull. Took me about a minute to do that. My utility knife really cut through it. I then mixed up some resin and applied a coat of it to the entire hull with the roller. After that, I put a strip of 2" fiberglass cloth down the keel, to add some more protection. Getting that piece to sit flat and be somewhat straight took some time.

Inspection of the hull followed. Checked for drips. Used a foam brush to go over the hull to take out any air bubbles. The boat is now tucked in for a night of cure. A second fill coat will follow tomorrow evening.

Day 18 - Glassing the hull

Jimmy DeMonie showed up to help out with installation of the fiberglass. With Jimmy's help, the work went along very quickly.

First, we put a strip of fiberglass cloth over the top of the boat, cut it to length, and then made some adjustments to the fabric at the bow an the stern. This involved some cutting of the fabric to allow us to overlap the fabric. What you are seeing in this first picture is the hull with the white fiberglass cloth draped over it.

After starting in the middle of the boat, and working towards the bow, I began wetting the fabric down with my roller and 8 ounces of resin mixed up. Jimmy followed up close behind with a 6 inch squeegee, to force the resin through the fabric and smooth out any air voids and bumps.

Working towards the bow, the overlap in the fabric is evident at the bow. Jimmie is using the squeegee at the proper angle of 27.94 degrees to the hull of the kayak.

All done with the glassing of the hull. Looks pretty good. It'll cure overnight and tomorrow after work, I'll put on a second coat of fiberglass (along with a reinforcement strip along the keep). Then on Friday, I will put on another coat of resin . Then I'll be able to see if it needs any more resin to smooth out any bumps.

From the squeegeeing action, there was some residual amount of resin that was wasted. It came off pretty foamy. We cleaned off the squeegee in a cup. After about 20 minutes, the foamy resin began to heat up to the point of melting the cup. Within an hour, it was solid as a rock.

Day 17 - Wetting it down

In preparation for putting down the fiberglass, I first had to put on one coat of resin. This is the 'saturation coat'. I mixed up a big batch of resin, broke open my package of rollers and got to work. As you can see from the photo, I'm taking this very seriously. Wax on - wax off.

The second photo show me half done. Quite a difference from one side to the other. The resin soaked in and provides a nice deep color to the hull. A little difficult to pick out in the pictures, but the grain of the wood is really popping out.

This 3rd picture shows the entire hull all saturated. Went over with a foam brush to take out any air bubbles from the rollers. After a nights curing, I'll be ready to put the cloth down tomorrow after work.

Day 16 - Sanding the hull

The resin has now set for roughly a day, and it's time for sanding. I used a manual sanding block to take down the high spots where the wires were. The resin gathered around the wires and made quite a few bumps. After knocking down the high points, which took the better part of 2.5 hours, I began sanding with an orbital sander. Started off with 80 grit and went through 4 sheets. Worked my way down to 400 grit. The hull is very smooth now, like butter. The picture of the stern shows how some of the precision cut pieces of wood didn't match up perfectly. I was able to slather enough resin in there to fill any imperfections. Both the bow and the stern now have a nice rounded edge to them.

Going to dry fit the fiberglass cloth tomorrow and possibly glue it down on Wednesday.

Day 15 - removing the wires

After a night of curing in the garage, the wires were ready to come out. Some of them were glued in pretty good. I used a wood burning iron to heat up the wires and release them from the resin. Worked pretty well, and much safer than my first thought of using my propane torch. With the boat stripped of the wires, it was time to step back and look at what I've done. Okay, back to work.


I sanded down some of the major high points, but decided I would mix up some more of the epoxy and fill in some of the gaps where the wires were, and to also add some resin to the bow and stern. Once hardened, I will sand this down and make it round to make it easier to fiberglass over. While this was curing, I test drove my new sanding mask. I'll put a picture of me in the Darth Vader mask next time. Based on my trial run with the sander, it should take me about 3 hours to sand the hull and get it ready for fiberglass.

Day 14 - Gluing the hull

I spent Saturday gluing the hull panels together. Started off with a first application of resin. That resin ran pretty good, but penetrated most of the nooks and crannies. You can see where it ran down the hull. After I figured out that I needed to wipe down the drips, it will make the cleanup go a lot smoother. I started some of the gluing on Friday night and didn't clean up. Those drips are now rock hard and I'll have to sand or scrape them off. Lesson learned.

After a couple hours of set time, I put on a second application of resin. This was thickened with wood flour. This didn't run as much, and filled the gaps a bit more. After wiping down the hull and scraping any drips, I let it sit for an hour, then flipped the boat over.

I then added some thickened resin to the inside of the hull at all of the joints and reinforced the bow and stern with more resin. I applied all the resin with a 10ml syringe. It worked pretty well. Cleaned it up with acetone afterwards. After it sits overnight, then I need to pull the wires.

Day 13 - hull panels in place

A very productive day on the boat. I first had to loosen all the wires on the starboard side of the boat to allow me to realign the hull panel. I then wired up the last port side panel. This picture shows that I have added wires to the temporary frames on the port side to suck it up to the frame and hold the shape.




Finished adding additional wires to the starboard side to give the hull it's nearly final form.










This is a closeup of the internal temporary frame and the wires used to hold it in place. The area that is shiny is the but joint with the hull panel pieces.









After adding an additional temporary bulkhead to the bow and stern, I then attached some support frames to the temporary hull frames. Before I flipped it over, I used a hot glue gun to set the temporary frames in place. I'll be removing the wires after I get joints glued in the next day or so.





Here's a shot of the hull taken from the bow. The picture is a bit deceiving. The width of the hull looks pretty wide.

Day 12 - More panels to the hull

Getting the hang of drilling holes and twisting wires. Now I know why these things go for over $3,000 assembled. Tonight, I was able to get the 3rd set of panels on, and start on the 4th set. I got the right side of the 4th panel in place, then noticed that it shifted about an 1/8" to the bow. Now I need to loosen all the wires, get it re-aligned and re-tighten the wires. Sounds like fun to me. The shape of the hull is now really visible. Should be able to do some fiberglass work this weekend.
The second picture is of the stern. Just showing how everything is coming together and all the wires I'm having to tie together. Next up is to finish with 4th set of panels and add some temporary reinforcing.

Day 11 - Adding panels

I added some additional panels to the keel panels this evening. Was much easier than it sounded in the directions. The panel pieces are very flexible and I'm still afraid I may snap one in half. In this first picture you can see all the wires that I had to tie.


Here's what the bow looks like with one half of the 3rd panel loosely wired in place. I had to hold the top of it in place, as I haven't yet put the other side on. The bow is matching up very nice. There is a bit of a difference in the stern of the boat. There is a rough 1/8" difference in the length. Looks like I'll be able to take care of that later.

Day 10 - Laying the keel

After getting all of the panel pieces glued together, bevelled, and prepped, it was now time to start slapping them together. Before I could do this, I now had to drill holes in the boat. It does seem strange that I have to drill holes into my boat, but that's what they told me to do. I used a block of wood I created to act as a guide when drilling the holes. It's 6-1/2" long and 1/2" wide. I drilled two holes, spaced at 6" in the center of the block. So, when I spun the block around, and made it flush, it spaced the holes out at 6".

After drilling hundreds of holes, it was time to tie together the to bottom pieces of the boat, to form the keel. You can see the wire ties along the length of the keel, all loose at this point. I had to cut each piece of wire and then bend each one into a U shape to aid in getting it in the holes. The pieces are being supported on a bunch of 2x4 scraps, so I can reach under the boat and guide the wires through the holes.

After getting the pieces wired together, I also wired in some temporary forms to hold the shape of the boat. When I get a bit farther along, all the internal bracing is removed. At this point, all the wire ties have been tightened. I spent some time making sure that the joint along the keel was aligned and even for the entire length.

Here's a shot of the stern. At each end of the boat, I had to triple the number of wire ties to hold the shape of the boat. You can see the amount of flex in the hull panel as it comes up and forms the tail end of the boat.

All in all, made a lot of progress today, and that includes re-building my bike (adding a new bottom bracket, stripping the frame down, cleaning all the parts, and putting it back together).

Day 9 - Back to beveling

After a traveling for the past couple of weeks, I'm back at work on the kayak. On Saturday, I completed one half of the beveling of the edges and nearly finished with the other side. Today, I hope to get the drilling of the holes started. That will allow me to start stitching the panels together.

Triming & Sanding

After a long break for some much needed cycling, I got back to the kayak today. Although I'll be out of town for a week starting tomorow. Tonight I worked on one of the deck pieces to bevel the deck reinforcement and the deck panel down. After getting that done, I felt like doing a bit of sanding on some of the lap splices to smooth them out. I think I did too good of a job on one of the joints. Before I knew it, I was into the wood and had sanded completely through the fiberglass cloth. So, I prepped the surface and re-did the fiberglass on the one joint.

Time to quit for the day after that. The garage is a bit cool this evening - 60 degrees and 55% humidity. Fall is upon us.

Day 7 - Beveling begins

After a day off, I completed gluing down the remaining top deck reinforcement pieces. Put more sawdust in that on the last time and it was much goopier (technical term) than before. Starting to get a feel for the differences in viscosity of the resin.

After that fun and excitment, I used the belt sander to take off some of the overhanging wood from the reinforcement. I was being very careful not to remove too much wood.


After the belt sander, I used the block plane to bevel the edge of the top deck where it will meet the side deck. I'm beveling down through 2 of the 3 layers of plywood. I only worked on one of the top pieces, as I really need to wait for the other glued pieces to set up.