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...

Here is another step that I do out-of-order from the official Pygmy manual. I lay the heavy fiberglass tape on the keel now, before I fiberglass the entire hull. The manual says to do it afterwards. However it looks much cleaner if you do it beforehand. Structurally there shouldn't be too much difference either way. In the future, if the keel ever needs to be re-taped, you just do what you would do otherwise... sand it a bit to rough it up and then lay down some more tape. No big deal. On the ends you will have better luck if you cut a few tucks in the edges of the tape. See below.  Try to make the tape as straight as you can. By putting it underneath the main fiberglassing it will be much less noticeable, but you'll still probably see it. The excess was simply squeegeed onto the bare wood which is fine and pre-saturates those areas. There is a huge debate on whether you should pre-saturate the panels or if you should just wet out the fiberglass cloth and hav...

The #4 panels were taped onto the temporary frames today, and I spent some time starting to get the panels all aligned. Remember... if you are following the Pygmy manual, you will not be doing this. Instead you will be building your kayak right-side-up and sewing it together with dozens of wires through dozens of holes that you drill through your panels. That is the old "stitch and glue" method. Instead, I am using strapping tape and Gorilla Tape to hold the panels onto the frames. Also remember that to build your boat this way that you need to have accurately cut "spacers" that you carefully mount onto your temporary frames. See my earlier posts. This hull will NOT have hundreds of holes! It's a muuuuuch cleaner look. It's also, in my opinion, much easier. I'm truly stumped as to why Pygmy hasn't switched over to this method years ago. ATTENTION : The taping method is NOT in the Pygmy manuals! IF you do the taping method you are on your own. ...

ALTERNATIVE STEP FROM THE OFFICIAL PYGMY MANUAL:   I switched around a step... I added the keel tape before fiberglassing the entire hull. Did that a few days ago and scraped off the rough edge that forms. Then sanded down the edges and the wood where I brushed out the excess epoxy. Doing the keel tape first makes for a much cleaner looking hull when you're finished. If in the future you ever need to add fiberglass to the keel you simply rough up the keel with some sandpaper and epoxy down a new strip. Did one of the more fun steps today... fiberglassed the outside of the hull! It's like magic how the fiberglass cloth turns clear as you add the epoxy. I can now get a good look at what the wood looks like. Here are some pictures of the cloth draped over the hull: (Again, note that the keel tape has already been applied and is underneath the cloth already.) As you smooth it down with your hands you'll see that it will conform to the shape of the bow. You'll nee...