I’ve spent the time since the last time I blogged about my kayak project working on epoxying the seams, and trying to round them. This involved a lot of messing about with files, sanding sponges, and the palm sander, and syringes full of epoxy thickened with wood “flour”. Yesterday I declared “good enough”. It’s not perfect, but I think that after putting more layers on it will be fine.
Today’s task was to put on the “saturation coat”. That’s where you paint on epoxy with a paint roller to “saturate” the wood in preparation for putting the cloth on. This is the part that I liked the most when I was doing my canoe 25 years ago, because it’s the first time you really see the beauty of the wood. Unfortunately, of course, I can’t find my damn camera. I have no idea where it went to. So the only picture I have is a crappy cell phone camera, which is the only digital camera in the world that is actually worse than my old Kodak DC-210 digital camera.
It took two loads of epoxy to cover, six squirts the first time, eight squirts the second. After painting it on, I’ve had to go over it several times (one immediately, then again 30 minutes and 60 and 120 minutes after painting it) with a dry foam brush to get rid of the bubbles that came up from the wood as the epoxy soaks in. The dry foam bush makes a “lovely” squeaking noise as you brush it. It sort of reminds me a certain pound puppy that’s sitting at my feet right now. It takes out the bubbles wonderfully. It doesn’t take out the “hair”, which seems to be artifacts of the fact that I didn’t do a great job of cleaning off the sanding dust after trying to clean up the seams.
If all goes well, tomorrow I should be putting on the fibreglas cloth. But pardon me, it’s time for me to go out and see if it needs another dry foam brushing.
Looks great!