Another Friday

It seemed to have just been sneaking up from behind me. Friday, that is. We'd gotten all of the fiberglass work complete on Thursday. We had to cut the sheer lines on the canoe. It is important to do this because the top edge of the canoe is sharp from the fiberglass that was trimmed and has now cured. The now-cured edge is a bit like a serrated knife, so it is very important to either sand it down or cut it off altogether. We opted to cut it off as we were going to be putting in the finish trim.

We made up a seat frame using scrap that was clamped together. This would allow us to determine the length of the seat frames so that we could cut them and would also allow us to scribe the blocks that the seat is mounted to. We did these tasks and then mounted the blocks in epoxy thickened with wood flour and silica filler. This thickened epoxy is referred to by Nick Schade of Guillemot Kayaks as "dookie schmutz". Don't ask me where that term came from...

The thickened epoxy is nice because it fills and hides any gaps you may have. When I apply the thickened epoxy, I mask the hull around the blocks with tape so that I get nice clean edges after I fillet the epoxy around the blocks and pull the tape when the epoxy is still "green". It looks good. The seat was then cut to length and mounted. Decks, which we had glued up earlier were cut to shape and then fitted. Thwarts and rails were already prepared, but it was time for the Friday clambake WAY too early for what we were trying to do.