Kayak Construction: Ok, maybe it is too hot to epoxy

Since I “wasted” the first three days of the four day weekend doing stuff like resting up, kayaking with my dearest wife, and doing an ill-advised upgrade on my Linux box, I felt like I really needed to get at least something done today. And what I had next on the list was to take off more wires and fill more seams with epoxy. And more importantly, to see how I could fix up the horrible mess that is the stern. Unfortunately the first three days were also the days when the weather was perfect. Today it’s hot as hell, and getting humid – and it’s going to stay like that until Thursday.

First I sanded and scraped the bow half of the deck, upon which I’d already done this wire removal and fill job a few days ago. Next I tried to make tape “dams” on the stern area, so that I’d be able to hopefully fill the gaps in with epoxy. Because I was going to do this filling, I mixed up two ounces of epoxy. I was a little wary of mixing two ounces in this heat, and I should have listened to myself.

When you fill seams, you use a dental syringe with about a third to a half an ounce of epoxy in it. I was having a bit of problem with the syringe leaving a decent sized trail of epoxy, and then suddenly splooge-ing out a big wad all at once. (If you’ve read “The Meaning of Liff”, think of it as a “Toronto”.) But I was doing ok, squeegee-ing up the big splooges, on my second or third syringe when I realized it was getting uncomfortably hot. I dumped the remainder and went back to my cup with the remainder of the two ounces I had mixed up, only to discover that the epoxy in the cup had solidified, and was also hot as hell – so hot it was melting the plastic cup.

So I mixed up another ounce to finish, and used about half of it. I didn’t get all the bits filled that I’d hoped to, but maybe when the temperature comes down below 80 I can continue on.