On my Pygmy Coho, I didn't have any of these problems, but it took me awhile to figure out how to apply just the right amount of epoxy to the joint. Too little and I got craters, too much and it oozed out under the mylar and onto the wood. Got a good tip from Pygmy, though, about clearing the excess from the joint. Soon after applying the expoxy and putting the mylar over the joint, squeegee the excess off the end of the mylar, drawing it onto the wood. This way you taper the joint before it dries, and you never have a lot of extra epoxy to sand off later. The joints created this way were glass clear, and the darker color of the epoxy on the wood disappeared later when I saturated the hull.

> Pygmy has gone to using 2"-wide strips of fiberglass tape on either
> side of a butt joint instead of a wood backplate. But for some reason ALL
> of my butt joints on my Arctic Tern came out poorly. The tape didn't go
> nearly as clear as the larger sheets of fiberglass cloth that go on later,
> so at each joint there is a slightly cloudy 2"-wide strip which shows
> up most prominently in direct sunlight. Add to this the fact that some
> epoxy must also be brushed out onto the surrounding wood, so I also have a
> 6"-wide area at each butt joint that is darker. The epoxy didn't
> equalize in color as Pygmy had claimed.

> So my next stitch-and-glue boat will have scarf joints. But you're better
> off choosing your boat based on fit and handling than on the joint method.

> Dean