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...

 In my last post I had wired and glued the Annapolis Wherry hull together. The next day was spent, and I mean the entire boat-work day, removing the $&*#ing wires! Unlike boats that are glued on the edges of the panels (kayaks for example, and the Expedition Wherry), the Annapolis Wherry uses the Lapstitch process which embeds every wire in epoxy. They ALL were a challenge to remove.  Luckily I had one trick up my sleeve that helped. You can heat the wires and they will soften the epoxy just around the wire and the wires can much more easily slip out. I use a soldering iron.  If you have a wire that just will not come out, you can hold a hot soldering iron to it and let it heat up for 20-30 seconds. Be careful not to scorch the wood! You can then generally work the wire out. In the picture above you can see me holding the soldering iron to the end of a cut wire. It easily came out even though it was embedded in epoxy.  This trick even works on the bow, stern, and...

Today I tightened the wires that I installed yesterday, adjusted the hull as best I could, and then epoxied it all together.  You start by rolling the hull upside down and tightening the wires using pliers. It's a challenge to get used to how tight you can go without snapping the wires. I've done many stitch and glue boats and I still snap a few each time. The hull will be noticeably tighter afterwards. Then you roll the boat upright and start epoxying.  NOTE: YOU MUST DO THIS NEXT STEP AND GET THE HULL UPSIDE DOWN AGAIN IN ONE SESSION OR THE BOAT MIGHT BE CROOKED! I used epoxy thickened with wood flour to make the fillets at the bow, all the bulkheads, and the transom.  Then we flipped the hull upside down again onto the 2 x 6s so that it was level. We took all the time we needed to make sure the hull, especially the bow, was straight and looked good.  If you want to stop for the day at this point you can, but I wanted to keep going so I filled all the seams with ep...

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...

Been busy on the CLC Annapolis Wherry build here.  Today I glued up the last planks and should be able to start stitching the hull together tomorrow.  The two halves are glued on top of each other to align them. Be sure to have plastic between the glue joints to avoid accidentally gluing the planks together! Yikes.    Also today I glued the rails together. These will be used to make the outwales and inwales later on. But now is a good time to glue the scarf joints while I have the long table set up. I'll be shortening the table when I start to stitch the hull together so that the bow and stern don't hit the ends of the table. That will make more sense later on.  Here the rail sections are laid out and ready for epoxy. I have plastic under the glue joints and clamps ready to go.   Here I'm starting to glue the scarf joints. I first put epoxy on each side of every joint, and then went back and did the clamping.    One hint to mitigate the scarf join...