It was very satisfying to get the canoe upright. It feels floppy but it looks canoey.
I built the cradles to hold it similar to how they show in Canoecraft. However, CC calls for the height to be 26″ on the upright members. I knew that would be too low for working so I made mine 30″. It turns out that is still far too low. They should be more like 36″ – 40″ high for me to work comfortably in. I don’t know who would want the canoe down at 26″…
I ended up making some inverse forms and putting them back on the strongback for most of the inside fairing work. That got things to a much better height.
You can see where the epoxy has come through any small gaps in the hull. This is good to see in a way because you know that the hull is watertight and those voids are now full of epoxy. But all those drips need to be scraped off now. You can see the wood glue squeeze out as well in lines where the station molds were. It pays to be diligent in wiping up squeeze out right away but you can’t get under the forms. Next time I’ll use less glue for the strips for sure. By the end I was using a much smaller bead of glue and had barely any cleanup to do. I never had problems with strips not holding once the glue had set up.
The curved scraper leaves neat curly shavings much like old spills that preceded matches. Fairing the inside is labourious work though. It’s very difficult to reach the areas in the stems with anything other than sandpaper. Given my aversion to sandpaper it was a long day for me. For the next canoe I’ll get a convex sole plane to do this step. And a better interface pad for my ROS.
