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Pinguino panel seams and stems filled

Today I removed all the pins and tape.

Then I filled the remaining seams that had been covered by the tape with slightly thickened epoxy from a syringe. I let that sit for a couple hours and then came back again with very thickened epoxy and a Popsicle stick and smeared it into the seams that needed to be filled more. This was mostly on the seam between panels #3 and #4. The epoxy was thickened to about the "peanut butter" stage and could easily be smeared on and the excess scraped off with the stick.


Here's a closeup of the #3 and #4 seam. Tomorrow it will be sanded flush.

Another step at this stage is to use thickened epoxy to fill and shape the ends. The idea is that fiberglass cloth sits better on curved surfaces than on sharp angles. In addition, the seams at the ends look pretty bad and must be filled to look better. It adds a nice touch to the ends.

The manual says to use wood flour, and that's what I've always done, but I wanted to experiment and add some color, so instead I added red phenolic powder that is also used to thicken epoxy. I thought it would look good, but now I think it just looks like Bondo... hmmm... we'll see how it turns out!


Lots of smears and such, but that's how the hulls look at this stage. This is normal. In fact, this actually looks pretty good so far. Most of my hulls have looked much messier at this stage.

Don't worry about the messiness. The smears will all go completely invisible when you add the fiberglass cloth in a few days. Also, any remaining small gaps in the seams will be filled when you add the cloth. It's like magic. It'll all be great... just don't worry at this point if your boat looks sloppy. And no, you will NOT sand off all these smears. Just leave them. 


Next steps: Tomorrow I'll use a rasp to shape the ends to a nicely rounded shape. I'll scrape and gently use my random orbital sander to clean up the epoxy, and then I'll hand sand on the seams just enough to gently round them a touch but will try not to sand through the top layer of wood.

Then I'll add a strip of fiberglass tape down the keel and wet it out.



Cheers!




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