Today I spend time sanding the seams that I filled yesterday, as well as the rest of the bottom of the Annapolis Wherry hull.  Then I taped off the bottom planks and fiberglassed the bottom.  Read in my earlier posts about how I do the fiberglassing.  Later I used a sharp utility knife to cut along the hardened epoxy at the edge of planks #1 and pull up the tape and excess fiberglass. If you only wait 2 - 3 hours until the "Green Stage" when it's still slightly sticky, it will cut easily and still come up easily. If you let it cure, like the manual says to do, it'll be like cutting through rock! Trim the excess during the "Green Stage" when it's still slightly sticky and pliable.  Here's how it looked after the tape was pulled up.  Next I will need to work on shaping the bow around the fiberglass I just added, sanding the entire hull again, and then adding the first coast of epoxy coating.    Stay tuned for more!

All I was able to do today was fill the seams on the outside of the Annapolis Wherry hull.  I used large tongue depressor craft sticks to get the rounded seams filled with epoxy thickened with silica.  It looks pretty good. Will sand the entire bottom tomorrow and then probably get the fiberglass on the #1 planks.  Stay tuned!

Today I sanded out the entire inside of the hull again, and epoxy-coated the entire inside, again. Phew.  Here's how it looked at the end of the day.   First I used a cabinet scraper to cut down the really big fuzz that is created when you epoxy bare wood. I used it on the entire hull because it's a great tool for finding raised epoxy bits too. Then power-sanded where my 6" sander could reach. I hand-sanded the rest using a foam block with 80-grit sticky sand paper backing. I buy the rolls of sandpaper. The sticky back works really well.  Then I used the cabinet scraper again to cut off the tall scratches that the 80-grit paper leaves. This gave a nice surface for the epoxy.  Here's a close-up of how it looked after sanding. Then I epoxy coated the entire inside again.  I mixed up about 10 pumps of epoxy and poured it along the keel in the second section (I'm not epoxy coating the fiberglass again in the bow and stern... will leave the weave rough in those areas...

Yesterday I brushed on a coat of epoxy into all the seams on the Annapolis Wherry. I then wiped the planks down to get rid of any drips but made sure to allow epoxy to settle into the seams.  Today I gently hand-sanded the seams just to rough up the epoxy so that the next coat would stick.  I then epoxy coated the entire inside of the hull. Remember that I had already sanded the fiberglass on the bottom two planks and they were ready to go.  This coat was to add a second coat to the fiberglass to start to fill the weave, and to add a first coat to the bare wood on the upper three planks on each side.  I used three tools: An epoxy spreader, and 3" roller with an Wooster Tiz epoxy roll on it, and a 2" foam brush.  The Annapolis Wherry is an easy one to epoxy coat because the boat is neatly divided into five separate sections. That way you can completely take care of one section without feeling like you have to rush to the next one.  I did one section at a tim...

I'm making very good progress. I brought home the Chesapeake Light Craft Annapolis Wherry one week ago, and yesterday was able to wire the hull together.    CLC does a very nice job in designing their panels. They use a puzzle joint that very accurately aligns the panels into the full-length planks.  After gluing up the final planks and storing them under my table, I adjusted the table to get ready to wire the hull.  The planks will need to be suspended between two sawhorses normally, but I'm very tall and bending over that much kills my back, so I simply removed one of the MDF boards that formed my table and shifted the other one to the middle. Then I screwed two 4' 2 x 6's to the ends of that MDF panel. That way, by using the factory edges, the 2 x 6's are aligned to each other. See the pictures below.  I store my completed planks and rails under the sawhorses until needed. That way they are mostly out of the way and stay flat. After making sure that the 2 x 6...

 Epoxying the inside of the CLC Expedition Wherry will take a much longer time than the outside did.  The inside is done in sections instead of the entire hull at one go. It's easier to do it in smaller sections like that, but is more tedious and time consuming.  CLC also wants you to run beads of thickened epoxy along all the hull seams and bulkhead seams. I am not sure why they want you to run seams along the hull panels, especially in the middle of the boat where the panels and much closer to flat to each other. That type of seam will have virtually no appreciable strength. I'm only running beads along both sides of the bulkheads, and along the panels at the bow and stern but only along the keel. Otherwise I'll leave it to the very strong holding power of the fiberglass cloth on both the inside and outside.    For fiberglassing the inside, CLC suggests that you cut a specific sized rectangle for each of the inside bays. There are different measurements...

I'm doing a few things out of order according to how the CLC manual says to do them. The manual has you fiberglass the inside of the hull first, but I glassed the keel tape the other day, and now I've glassed the outside of the hull.  For the first-time builder, epoxying the outside of the hull is MUCH easier than the inside and you'll learn a ton about how epoxy handles and such. That will set you up much better for success epoxying the inside later. I don't know why CLC has you do the hardest bit first... weird.  CLC has gone with 6 oz. cloth for this boat. That is heavier than the 4 oz. cloth that goes on most Pygmy kayaks and should make for a very strong hull. It's heavy though.   The cloth lays nicely and you can easily make it conform to the hull shape around the bow by gently, with both hands, spreading and smoothing the cloth downward. Gently pulling on the excess around the bow helps too. You'll be surprised by how much it will conform.  Once fully con...

The hull has now been sanded on the outside and is looking good to go. The thickened epoxy around the bow has been nicely shaped.    The CLC Expedition Wherry manual has you fiberglass the inside of the hull before the outside, and they have you add fiberglass tape to the outside keel after you fiberglass the outside. They have the tape on the outside layer.  I'm switching it all around and doing those things in reverse order. It just makes more sense to me. Here is what I'm doing: 1. I'm adding the keel tape first . The tape is intended to be an extra guard against rocks and dragging on the beach and such. The idea is that if it wears away that you can epoxy on another strip of tape in the future. I agree, but there is no reason that you must SEE the tape. Even the CLC manual has you sand the hull smooth, and so the tape would somewhat disappear anyway. However, putting the tape under the main fiberglass layer helps to hide it more. It also acts as a way to help hold the...

 Just a quick update... I was able to pull the wires from the CLC Expedition Wherry.  The wires that held the panels together came out easily. Just snip the inside bit and pull from the outside and they will come right out.  The wires on the transom, bow, and bulkheads though were harder to pull. The bulkhead wires eventually came out with some persuasion. I found that I had to snip both sides of the bulkhead wires and then pull out the two outside wires separately and then the inside bit that ran through the bulkhead. Wasn't too bad but took time.  I started with the transom though and wish now that I had learned a trick that I would figure on on the bow. I ended up leaving some wires in the transom. They will not be seen, but I now know that I could have easily gotten them out.  NEAT WIRE PULLING TRICK: IF you have a wire that is stuck in hardened epoxy, you can usually get it out by doing this. 1) Snip the wire on the outside close to the hull be leave an 1/8...