Monday:
We got up early and went to see how yesterday’s work turned out.
For a first stab, I think it turned out pretty well. We did use a little too much epoxy. On a couple of pieces the mylanar had moved around so much when we weighted it that the scrap plywood pieces on top came into contact with epoxy. This was partially because I was too conservative with the mylanar, I think we floated a little too much epoxy and we were tired and uncomfortable from kneeling on concrete by the end of yesterday so probably a little less attentive.
Comfort is key to paying attention to details
Fortunately, the epoxy was easy enough to clean up with a sharp razor on the edges and I was able to tease off the epoxied scrap edges without losing any veneer from my kayak. The trick is to use a sharp razor blade and leave bits of the scrap plywood on the veneer. It can be sanded out.
If it had been really bad, I could have used the router bit on the dremel to cut around the epoxied plywood scrap so that it could then be sanded out.
So, we spent about 45 minutes cleaning up the edges - it’s easier to do while the epoxy is still curing. I think there’s a planer fitting for my dremel that I might invest in for the final edge clean up. I noticed when A initially started using a little hand planer on the edges, her tendancy was to tip it so she could see where the blade was cutting, but that will give the edges a bevel which we don’t want.
Next step: (after work) sanding the other side and gluing it. I’ll duct tape my sander to a small vacuum cleaner to keep the dust down. We’ll be ready to start glueing boat 2 tomorrow!
July 17th, 2006
Sunday:
We rushed out to the garage to begin planning our day. The first step is to tape and epoxy all the butt-ends together; 6 strips per side with 2 butt ends per strip on each boat.
The instructions say to do 1 side at a time, but we have a large garage so we figured we should be able to do 1 boat at a time which would save us 2 days in the overall project.
Of course, that required a second reorganization of the garage. Should have read the manual before building our benches as we didn’t need them for this stage and we had to move them out of the way (losing all our shimming and leveling). We also took care to thoroughly sweep the floor so our plywood strips wouldn’t be marked or pitted when weighted down.
When we bought our bed last winter, I had saved the plastic so we covered the floor and our bench tops with plastic.
The instructions say to work on the floor and use bricks to weight down the joints so they’re flat. However, the last kayak project in the garage had left pools of hardened epoxy so we had to find places that were bump-free to put the joints on top of. We then dug up some bricks from around the yard and washed them off. It turned out that we did not have enough bricks so we tried to compensate by using clamps on the strongbacks.
If you’re reading this because you’re building a kayak … the clamps were a pain in the rear. Use bricks. Buy them if you need to, they’re cheap. What ended up working best for us was diving weights.
Here is what we did in a step-by-step format (the instructions are well written, but they’re in narrative format, and I prefer to review steps when I’m in the middle of putting something together.)
- lay out all the strips you’re going to epoxy with the stickers facing up and the ends to be joined together abutting.
- check for any plywood manufacturer stickers - there was one on this kit, but it pulled right off without needing to be razored and the sticker residue sanded our with just a few strokes of a rubber sanding bar. I’m guessing from the repeated comments in the manual that some folks have a problem identifying which side is up and which is the inside of the boat. The stickers are on the inside of the boat which is good since that’s a good place to practice epoxying.
- collect all the weights needed: for 1 boat, you need 24 weights PLUS 12 weights to place on each panel as you’re gluing. It’s July, so we could wet about 6 joints at a time before the epoxy began to set up, which was about what our knees could handle on the concrete before needing a stretch break. You need those extra weights to hold the 2 butts flat until you finish floating the tape and put the final weight on top.
- You then need to cut the tape and mylanar for each butt joint. I then used the cut pieces of mylanar to mark off scrap plywood (which is placed on top to evenly distribute the weight) and cut the plywood on the band saw to be smaller than the mylanar. Because we’re building 2 boats I numbered each piece to be reused on the other boat.The instructions say to cut the mylanar to overlap a little on each joint. I cut mine to overlap about 1/8 inch and that was too conservative. I have to buy some more for the other side and 2nd boat which I’ll cut to be at least 1/2 inch overlap if not more.
- The epoxy is more viscuous than I’m accustomed to - I usually use epoxy with wood flour, so I was a little unprepared for the movement when weighting it. I think too that we could use a little less epoxy.
So, setting up and gluing the butt joints turned into an all day project - I had expected to spend the morning on it. I think though that the other side and the second boat will go very quickly now that we’ve got the hang of it. We’re still on schedule.
July 17th, 2006