: I broke it ;oD.

: Rather than wait overnight, I thought I'd go down and put some
: weight on it. It held. I flipped it over a few times, putting
: more and more weight on it. Sure enough, it broke. Took quite a
: bit of weight, and there was a lot of flex to the board, but it
: did break. Like you say, the joint wasn't completely good. The
: side of the joint that was near perfect was fine. You can see
: where the wood tore before the Gorilla Glue did. The other, with
: that slight gap... not so good. There was no wood/wood contact
: in that portion of the joint. The GG didn't even foam in that
: area. That makes me wonder if I spread it too thin in that area,
: or if it never made contact with the wet side of the joint and
: therefore never foamed, and the cured coat is simply too thin
: for me to see.

: I figure I have two choices for the cut: become much more
: proficient planing (practice makes perfect!) and more fussy with
: the joint itself; rig up a jig for my circular saw. I'm not a
: fan of the circular saw, as I've stated in the past... I much
: prefer hand tools for precision work. I'm not sure how good a
: cut I can get with a jig, which may be part of my hesitation to
: use the circular saw.

: If Titebond 3 will give me some "wiggle room" in the
: quality of my joint, I'd be happy. The temperature in my
: basement workshop has to be around 50-60 degrees. judging from
: my desire to wear a long sleeve shirt when I'm working. I'm
: leery of using epoxy 'til the weather warms it up, regardless of
: its gap filling properties.

: For the time being, I'll probably recut this joint, and practice on
: it a bit 'til I get the knack of perfecting that joint. Might
: even build a jig for my block planes, since that should be easy
: to do. Seein' as the GG worked on half the joint (the wood split
: first), I'll probably stick with it, assuming I can get get good
: joints.

: There's more pics of the failure up on my Picasa album...

: https://picasaweb.google.com/theluckyone17/Kayak#

I usually use thickened epoxy for scarfs, but mostly because I have lots of epoxy around and it's reliable and allows for less than perfect scarfs. Titebond works too. I'm not really fond of poly glues, though some seem to have much luck with them.

I try to put the scarfs on the ends of the boat where there is both less bend and less stress. Btw, I've used big box store pine for several Yost boats, works fine and only adds a slight amount of extra weight. I don't dowel scarfs but if they make you feel better about the joints then definately do it :)

Bill H.