Today we finished shaping and fitting the cockpit coaming, which did require much fitting and cutting where the two planks meet at the foreward point. This is effectively the last part that needed building so that is another milestone finished. The only thing that remains is some sort of a back rest for the forward position.
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| Second coat on nose with fiberglass. |
We applied one coat of resin (proprietory formula to Bondo) made up of a styrene monomer to the ends of the boat as photographed. The resin soaks nicely into the canvas as the canvas becomes translucent. After that we sanded the first coat and removed some of the fuzzy bits by sanding and applied a second coat of resin along the leading edges and applied a strip of fiberglass cloth about 3" wide over and along the ridge hanging 1 1/2" over each edge.
Schuyler did a masterful job, sticking the cloth down with the resin by dabbing and stroking the fibres. We created little disposable brushes by furling bits of discarded canvas which worked very well. The end product looks quite professional and a lot better than my building project of the old canoe in '74. A trick which I did not know then was to cut along the warp of the cloth and then remove about 5 warp strands along each edge. This eliminated the development of loose strands that would get mixed into the resin and make it quite messy with blobs of string.
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