Just got my pygmy Artic Tern kit and last night epoxied one side of all my butt joints (for the kayaks left side). Inspected the joints this morning and it looks like I used WAY too much epoxy to float the glass tape.

Now that I have pulled off the mylar strips, I have left myself with thick, hard epoxy which seeped out beyond the mylar and WAY over the seem edges.

Of course the next step in the instruction manual is to trim the excess tape at the seem edges, but I think I have a much bigger mess to take care of. My box knife is just barely able to cut through the epoxy.

Anybody else make these mistakes? How did you trim off the excess hardened epoxy, is there a time saver here?

Also, I accidently glued a piece of one of the 3.5" wide scrap plywood boards (used to weight down the mylar) to the side of a panel. When I removed the board, it pulled a nickel sized piece of ply off of the panel and produced a half-inch crack in the ply. Should I just epoxy fill this area to repair it, (I'm almost done blaming myself for being ignorant enough to damage it)?

Paul (boy am I nervous) Williams