The wooden boat project ch2

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After I celebrated the Epiphany masses and three baptisms I headed back to my parents’ house and my Dad’s workshop to work on my boat. Before New Years I had stitched the boat together and then put the first of many coats of epoxy on the seams. Today I renewed the gluing process by thickening up some epoxy and putting it into the seams and rounding out the corners. Then I placed 3” fiber glass tape on top of that thickened glue and then soaked the tape with epoxy. Soaking the tape with epoxy took a tremendous amount of glue and I had to go back and work with the brush and push the glue into the tape in certain spots that just didn’t want to take the glue. I made sure to smooth it out the best I could. I then let this dry until it became tacky. I put another layer of slightly thickened glue on the seam and tape again. And let it dry until tacky.

I wasn’t satisfied with the seams and my friend recommended that I thicken up the corner seam. So that’s what I did. This again took a lot of glue and was pretty tedious as it was very thick. Imagine trying to stir peanut butter about 20 times. I then smeared it in the corners and smoothed it out. If I had to do it all over again I would have put this under the fiber glass tape because I think it would look a little better and I think it would have saved on the sanding and smoothing part. Next I put two more layers of epoxy over this and left it to dry nice and hard. Next week I plan to sand the seams down. This will also rough up the epoxy so that it will accept paint.

I also did a couple of other things. While I was on retreat my Dad made the ribs out of solid oak and with his help glued them and screwed them in place to get a nice tight fit. We will take out the screws later. After these were in place I went in with some thickened glue and rounded out the seams and corners around the ribs. I also put some epoxy on the top of the ribs to seal up the end grain so that it would accept paint better. Like with the other seams I’ll sand and smooth these down.

As a side note I noticed red spots appearing on the fiber glass tape when I was laying it down. Some how I had cut myself and din’t notice it. So the result is that there is my blood in this boat. it reminds me of a part in my favorite historical fiction series where the sea captain tells his midshipmen that there is enough of his blood in the wood of the frigate that they could be relatives. Of course when this ship is found a thousand years in the future they can draw my DNA from the boat and know who the boat maker was. I have a busy weekend coming up but I hope to do some more work next Monday.