Larry,

I built the Outer Island and followed Jay's instructions: Tack 2"-wide 6-oz. tape along the perimeter of the hull so that half the tape is sticking up above the shear. Put a dot of hot-melt glue ~1/2" down from the shear. Press the tape on and hold it a moment until the glue cools, put another dot about 6" away, press, dot, press...around the entire perimeter. Then lay the deck on top, make sure that all the tape is poked back inside the boat, and spend a few hours taping the deck to the hull with strapping tape, forcing the joint to be flush (the time needed will depend on how warped out of shape your hull is...) Then park the kayak up on its side with the bow pointed down a bit. Putting the bow on the floor and the stern on one stand works well. Then mix a few oz. of epoxy, reach in and pour a puddle as far down as you can reach thru the hatch . A headlamp is nice to have, or at least a light clipped on the cockptit area. Brush the epoxy around with a cheap bristle brush mounted on the end of a dowel or scrap strip ~5' long. Cut the handle off a 1" brush and tape it on the end with a small right-angle bracket bent to 45-degrees so you can get to the ends of the boat. Once done with the hard-to-reach tip, continue pouring and brushing back up to the cockpit. Tip the kayak the other way, so the stern is down, and do the same thing. The bow end doesn't have to be cured. If you apply a bit too much epoxy, you might see some slide back down, but that's O.K. -- it's just excess, anyway. Once done with the stern, I put the kayak back up on both stands and watched for these runs while the epoxy started to cure and touched-up with the brush a bit. Then do the other side after the first side cures overnight.

I also added an extra step. I had an over-beveled strip on the shear of the deck, which meant there was a large gap on the inside, although the outside was tight. I didn't want to see light thru the joint, so I used a syringe left over from my Pygmy kit to fill the gap with thickened epoxy just before doing the epoxy job mentioned above. I just pushed the tape out of the way as I applied a bead of thickended epoxy, then pushed the tape down into the fresh bead, and only went as far as I could reach into the hatch areas. This may not be a bad practice, anyway, because you want to ensure that the gap gets thoroughly filled with epoxy.

The whole process went very, very smoothly.

Dean

: I'm getting close to mating the deck to hull on my Expedition Single. Can
: anyone describe Jay Babina's method of hot gluing the fiberglass tape in
: place before mating the deck and hull, Any pitfalls?

: Thanks, Larry C.