> Long time lurker and first time builder having a blast. Quick question:

> I have just wet out the hull of my Arctic Tern with epoxy and am ready to
> glass but can still see the weave from the glass tape on a couple of the
> panels butt seams. I got the impression from the manual that they would
> clear themselves out which in retrospect was probably a silly idea. I'm
> wondering if I should try sanding back down to the tape and wetting it out
> again? I think that my biggest concern is messing up in glassing the whole
> hull, it is an absolute work of art at the moment and I would hate to
> spoil the beautiful look of the wood/grain by not being able to get it
> completly clear during the next step. Thank you very much to all, I sure
> have learned alot keeping up with this board!

John's not halucinating or being too picky, I had the same thing happen on my Arctic Tern last winter. I didn't even realize it in the apartment I built it in (poor lighting) but the 2" tape is painfully obvious in sunlight. It shows up as a yellowish-cloudy-2"-wide stripe around the boat. This is probably due to some minute bubbles in the epoxy, but it's extremely hard to know what the end result will be when you put the mylar and weight on top of the joint. On the one hand you want to squeegee the tape to clear out the bubbles, but on the other hand if you don't saturate it heavily you end up with the larger air pockets that were mentioned before. I would recommend to anyone in the future that they skip Pygmy's butt-taping process and go with the old butt-plate-on-the-inside method. It really doesn't leave a flat spot as CLC claims. Betsie Bay Kayaks does very nice production stitch-n-glue boats ($3000) and they still use butt-plates.

I read a post a while back that suggested that you continue ahead and stitch the hull up. Then take a knife blade or putty knife and pull off the tape on the outside. The inside tape will be enough to keep the boat together while you 'glass the entire hull. I might actually try to peel the tape off the outsides now, and just be extra careful when stitching the boat up.

If you end up sanding, be careful that you don't sand back down to bare wood -- the next coat of epoxy will be absorbed differently, and can leave lighter colored (blonder) spots.

Dean