: I thought I'd post an update on my progress building a Waters Dancing Solace
: 16 LT for my wife. It's my first boat so I'm going slow and trying to
: visualize each complete step before I start. It seemed like it took
: forever before I had anything that looked even remotely like a boat. The
: kit parts had to be inventoried, all the parts had to be sanded, then
: glued together then cleaned up then have the edges beveled; the seat was
: stitched together and then finally the hull panels were stitched up.

: There are 10 panels that make up the hull and 8 interior bulkheads to help
: give it shape. I'm figuring I've got somewhere around 400 stitches in this
: thing so far. Once the hull was stitched up and all the bulkheads laced
: in, it really was a beautiful thing to look at, which I've been doing a
: lot of. The latest step has been to put fillets into the bow and stern
: ends then glue all the remaining joints from the outside. Placing the
: fillets into the very tight space at the stern stem was not a pretty
: sight. Near the ends where there's not much of an angle between the hull
: panels to get epoxy into the joints, I placed tape across all the panel
: joints from the inside to hold them together. Sort of like a bunch of 'V'
: shaped straps glued to the inside of the hull at the ends. Of course with
: the saturated tapes in the hull, all the excess ran down into the bottom
: to pool around the nearest bulkhead. The bulkheads are all trimmed with
: electrical tape so I'm hoping I can pop them out of the hardened epoxy
: when the time comes. (fingers crossed)

: Last night, after reading the thread about the scrapers, I got out my carbide
: scraper and cleaned up all the glued joints on the outside of the hull. It
: was the perfect tool for the job. It only shaves off the high points and
: leaves a perfectly smooth surface behind, much more precise and
: controllable than a sander too. Not to mention the lack of dust, which is
: s good thing around here these days after breathing nothing but smoke from
: the wildfires since last Sunday.

: Next step is to stitch the deck together, using the hull as a template for
: the outer edge, then tape and glue the deck panels the same as the hull.

: A few frustrations so far: 1. How the heck does anyone do epoxy work without
: gumming up their hands beyond all hope? I haven't figured out how to
: handle and place saturated tapes without using my gloved fingers, which
: means it then gets transferred to everything else I touch. AAUUUGGHHH!
: Maybe there's an assortment of wet-fiberglass-handling tools I haven't
: figured out yet. Maybe I can make a big pair of tweezers from a couple of
: tongue depressors. Have to work on that.

I just went through a lot of pairs of gloves. They're cheap! I measured, cut and laid out all glass I needed to work with in order to minimize handling once the gloves were wetted out with epoxy. Of course, that meant that the itchy nose had to be ignored unless I could find a spare piece of mahogany laying around. Even then I had to be careful not to do a frontal lobotomy.

: 2. Is there a way to keep all the loose strands of glass threads from
: unraveling off the ends of the tapes? They come off when I place the tape
: and try to smooth it down so I have to dig them out of the wet epoxy with
: a little stick, and transfer more wet epoxy to my shears when I pick them
: up to trim the wet threads off the tape. DOUBLE AAUUGGHH!!

I made sure all of my glass cuts were clean to reduce the chance of strands coming off the cloth. After that I tried not to touch the edges of the cut glass. I wasn't always successful but I became very capable with sanding. I used 40 grit flooring paper to remove those annoying strands that got glued down.

Best I can do to help, Paul.

Man, it's coming along nicely. Keep it going, Paul, I'm rooting for you.

Robert N Pruden