Business travel, spring yard chores, building docks and getting my big boat ready have taken most of my spare time. Today, I dry fit and glued the major parts together, converting a pile of wood into a boatlike object.
I used plywood pads and machine screws to assmble and test fit. The pads prevent the head of the screw from creating a bigger hole to fill later. I attached the stem at the bow, using a length of cord wrapped around the planks to bring them together. I then attached the frame. Moving aft, I used more cord to pul the planks against the transom sides. Doing so revealed that I needed to bevel the sides and bottom of the transom some more. So I dissassembled adm reassembled 2 more times, shaving the bevel with a fine set plane til I had good mating surfaces. Epoxy is great and fills gaps, but good wood to wood fits are hard to beat.
Once the fit was right , I drilled pilot holes for my permanent fasteners. I dissassembled everything again and coated the surfaces to be joined with epoxy. This soaks in to the wood, so that my subsequnet thickened mixture doesnt soak in and starve the joint. I let that gel, then I applied the thickened mixture and re-assembled everything, this time with silicon bronze ring nails (transom and frame) and silicon bronze wood screws (stem.)
It was 50-degrees F tonight. Using the fast hardener gave me about an hour to do all the gluing, reassembly and clean up of drips, spatters and squeeze out. I masked the permimeters of the joints with packing tape (epoxy doesnt stick to it) which made cleaning easier.
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