Two Schools of Thought

There are two schools of thought when it comes to fiberglassing a wood strip canoe. One school calls for only one coat of resin when applying the cloth. This is done to leave a finish with some texture to it which would end up with a non skid type surface. It is very hard to squeegie the resin out of the cloth and end up with a consistent surface. Dave, the builder of these canoes was of the one coat, rough surface school and I'm leaving the interior of this first canoe as is as he did a very good job of ending up with a uniform, consistent surface.

The exterior of the boat wasn't finished to the same level, so I added two more layers of epoxy resin to the hull and the decks. The extra resin will give me plenty of material to sand the hull to a smooth uniform surface. I put resin on the hull with the boat inverted, waited a day for the resin to cure then flipped the boat and added resin to the decks.

Now that the resin is cured enough I'm going to start sanding all of the wooden trim on the boat. This picture shows the level of detail that Dave went to in making a watertight compartment in each end of the boat. When I have the wood trim sanded smooth I'll sand the resin smooth and spray finish over the entire boat.

I've got another day of nice weather so I'll move the boat outside to work. Natural light is always better to sand with and clean up is easier.

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