The last post noted I need to glue the outside deck seams. And I've done that. Here's a picture of the deck secured on the hull with the deck seams filled with epoxy.
You'll notice the deck still has all the wire stitched installed. After the epoxy hardened, I was able to remove all the wire stitches. Something to note here. I believe I've installed and removed over 600 wire stitched so far in the construction process.
After removing the wire stitches, I removed the deck and turned it over to fill the deck seams on the inside with more epoxy. I also did a fillet of thickened epoxy at the front reinforcement plate to create a ramp for fiberglass to lay smoothly over this surface.
Then I needed to lay strips of fiberglass tape in between the gaps of the reinforcement plate. Then I applied fiberglass tape to the complete length of the inside of the deck along each seam.
Once this all hardened, I applied more fiberglass over the underside of the recess plate for the full width of the deck. Then one complete saturation coat plus a second coat of epoxy over the entire underside of the deck. Altogether, these processes took about a week to complete because of the time to let the epoxy processes harden between each step.
Here's a picture of the deck underside with all of the above accomplished.
You'll also see the hull in the above photo. To get the hull in the shape you see above I had to do the following processes.
First, I had to remove all of the temporary frames from the inside of the hull. Five of them. That involved melting the glue that was holding them in place with a soldering iron. Then taking a hammer and knocking them out. They were also partially secured with excess epoxy that had found its way to the frames from all of the previous work. So when they were removed I needed to then sand the areas, and fill the seams with epoxy that didn't get filled earlier. I then had to lay in some very thickened epoxy up and down the bow and stern stem seams. And then reinforce the bow butt seams with a couple layers of fiberglass cloth. And finally, saturate the entire inside of the hull with epoxy. Altogether, this was about 3 more days of work. And then I had to sand the inside smooth so that I could lay fiberglass cloth down for the complete inside of the hull. That's basically what you see above.
Now it's time to glass the inside of the hull. This process was the most difficult so far to complete. Primarily because I was confused on what the construction manual was telling me to do. That was two days ago, on Saturday. So I needed to make a couple assumptions. Something I don't like to do. SO, I proceeded to do what the manual told me what to do (based on my assumptions) up to the point of actually apply epoxy to the fiberglass. I waited until this morning so I could call Pygmy and confirm my assumption were correct. I won't bore you with the details of my confusion. But I will show you what the hull should look like with the fiberglass laid out prior to applying epoxy.
Here you'll see two separate pieces of fiberglass laid out from the middle going to the bow and the stern. They are secured to the sides over a strip of masking tape for the length of the hull on both sides with strips of masking tape every 6 inches. I sent this picture to Pygmy this morning, and they said I got it perfect.
So, with the first difficulty out of the way, on to the next difficult part. That was to saturate the cloth with epoxy while keeping it in place and insuring all the chines are epoxied and fiberglassed well with no air bubbles. Not easy! But in the end, I got it done. This is what it looks like now.
I'll come back tomorrow and apply some more epoxy to the areas above the fiberglass that didn't get epoxied during the previous step.
And now for an embarrassing admission. You may recall that I made a mistake early on when gluing the butt seams that had me do some rework. Well that required using more epoxy. And you might recall me noting how sloppy I was in the beginning when gluing (epoxying) the panel seams for the hull. That sloppiness led to a whole lot of sanding and filing to remove the excess epoxy. What I'm saying is, I've used more epoxy than the construction plan accommodates. About 2/3's through saturating the inside of the hull fiberglass I ran out of epoxy. Anyone with 1/2 a brain would have realized more epoxy would be required before beginning the saturation process. But not me. So when I ran out, I needed to make an emergency run to a local marine hardware store for more epoxy so I could complete the last step. It was tense! Thankfully, I live on the Puget Sound on an island that has one marine hardware store just a few miles from my house. Mission accomplished.
I've got some more travel to do this week, so it will be a couple more weeks before I make anymore updates.
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