It has been four months since I bumped this thread for numerous reasons:
Scraping and sanding the interior of the hull is a pain in the ass.
Winter is for fishing and hunting.
Fiberglass and epoxy work require temperatures higher than my unheated garage could accommodate.
Fiberglass cloth is much harder to work with on the interior of the hull.
Scraping and sanding the interior of the hull is still a pain in the ass.
Now the hull was off the forms, the first thing to do was construct a frame to hold the canoe upright.
Next, I took a paint scraper and rounded off the edges with a grinder. This allowed me to scrape the glue off of the interior of the hull without gouging the wood with the 90 degree corners of the scraper.
Scrape, sand, repeat.....
Just like the exterior, gaps are filled with epoxy thickened with wood dust.
The next step was to fiberglass the interior. I thought I took pictures of the process, but cannot locate them. Which means my memory is failing me. To describe the process, I'll just say that this was the most frustrating day of the build. The fiberglass didn't cooperate well with the interior curves of the hull. Also, I put on the epoxy too thick, so I had runs after two coats. I stopped the process, let it cure for a month, and got out the sander again.
I'm not sure if the hull was completely ready for me to stop sanding, but I was.
I added the last two coats of epoxy today, and now have a finished hull.
I celebrated the thought of putting down the sander and picking the woodworking tools up to complete the interior with a beer.
- By fatman
- By TX.
- By fishskibum
- By ScottP