Tonight I had two objectives. The first was to cut the excess fiberglass off the deck and put a fill coat of epoxy on the underside of the deck. This was easily accomplished.

My second objective was to drill holes for the pvc tubing I was going to use for the toggle cord. This involved a couple of steps. First, I used a forstner bit in a cordless drill to drill through the hull. Once through, I angled the drill just enough to get the brad point at the center to dig in and then I straightened out the bit to complete the cut on the second side. This worked well and I got clean holes on both sides of the hull. I then inserted a piece of pvc tubing that was a little bit longer - I will sand this down later, and I will paint the rims of the tubing black to add a little contrast.

I then cut a scrap of okuome plywood to make the dam for the end pour in the stern. I was doing this with epoxy thickened with wood flour. On the first dam, I didn't have the epoxy quite thick enough and it oozed through the tape that I was using to hold the dam in place. I spread some of this epoxy along the keel seam to build it up a little, and scooped up most of it and added more wood flour to stiffen it up. This seemed to work and it stopped oozing.

For the bow, I made sure to make a thick epoxy/wood flour mix, and this seemed to work well. I mixed the epoxy first, and then cut the temporary dam on the bandsaw. In the time that it took to do this - about two minutes, the epoxy began generating quite a bit of heat and it was good that I poured it when I did as a large lump had developed that was setting quickly. This batch also expanded a bit more so that it was proud of the top of the hull.

This was hard to the touch within a couple of minutes, so I removed the temporary dams to allow it to dry better.

I have thus far been enjoying the build very much as it has been a real learning experience - in particular in working with epoxy and getting the consistencies right. While I don't think the interior will win any HGTV awards, the challenges of building the hull and deck and finishing the insides of each has taught me some valuable lessons that I can apply once these two bits are tacked together and I begin working on cleaning up and finishing the outside of the kayak.

Tomorrow night, I hope to clean up the end pours and tack the hull together.