Here's a shot of the deck and hull being joined. The first seam went relatively smoothly. I put a fillet of thickend epoxy out at the ends because this design has prety sharp transitions between deck and hull near the bow and stern. It felt really good carrying the boat out the garage door in one piece to flip it over!

Here is a useful modification to my caulking gun to deliver thickened epoxy to the ends of the kayak. the twine is attached to the trigger to be able to actuate the plunger from the extended handle. I purchased some empty caulking tubes to fill with epoxy...it worked pretty good, but was diffcult to maneuver out at the end. The caulking gun handle didn't allow me to deliver very accurately. I ended up just slopping it on the joint, them working the epoxy into position using a chip brush attached to the end of a stick. If I were to do it again, I would angle the extension downward so that it wasn't in line with the tip. On the second side, I'm going to see if it works better with the original handle pointing up.

Here is how I attached a chip brush to the end of a stick. It's kind of hard to see, but the end is cut off at a compound angle. It worked really well at spreading an initial layer of epoxy as well as forming the thickened epoxy fillets. I also used it to roll out the epoxy soaked fiberglass tape.




Lastly, here is the Greenland paddle I carved. The wood is a cedar 2x4 I picked up at Home Depot. It was really tight grained and mostly free of knots. The finish is Watco Teak Oil finish...about 8 or 9 coats. The tips have a piece of fiberglass epoxied on for abrasion resistance.

A couple of other details finished. First is the finger slot for prying the hatches open...still needs to be coated with epoxy. Then the slots cut in the deck for the deck storage bungies. One pic shows an "oops" if you can find it. Oh, and did I mention that right now it is weighing in at 30 Lbs!!! Still need to add a seat, attach the deck to the hull and add bulk heads, but I'm confident I can keep the weight under 40 lbs.

I have made some progress over the Christmas holiday and here are some pictures to prove it. I hope to have the hull and deck joined before I go back to work in January 2008.

Here are the hold downs for the hatch covers. I will attach the fittings I made out of FG and Carbon fiber to the hull. Then I will use bungie cords to tension down the covers.

Here are the cheek plates used to keep me centered and to attach the back band to. I also added a couple of labels. I used rice paper and wrote the model, designer and date completed. I left it vague (knowing how I work) at "2008"...It WILL get done in 2008!

Here are some shots of the installed foot braces. I checked them out and they should be good for me. I positioned one of them incorrectly so I'm pretty much at the end of travel on one side. It shouldn't be a problem unless I lend the boat to someone with longer legs than I.

I also found time to carve a Greenland style paddle. I don't have a good picture of it yet, but here is a picture of the pile of shavings that resulted.