Love Me Tender, Volume VII

Sealed, sanded, and skeg secured.

They call it stitch and glue, based on the notion that those two words encapsulate the major components of the construction method.   I would propose,  however,  that this is a little misleading,  and that it actually should be called stitch and glue, and glue, and glue.  And sand, and sand, and sand, and sand, and sand...

It helps build a heated "tent" in
order to get epoxy to dry in a cold garage 

At last report, I had just wrapped up the glue part of stitch and glue.  With the hull solid, covered with fiberglass, and sealed in epoxy, it was essentially structurally complete.  Not pretty or usable,  but structurally complete.  In keeping with the "sand as much as possible, as early as possible" philosophy that I have been employing on this boat, I decided to take some time out to sand the hull before moving on.  As a note, I don't know that pre-sanding is saving my any construction time relative, but I do believe I'll get a modestly higher quality product in the end.  Plus, shorter sanding sessions are slightly more tolerable than a massive end-of-project sandathon.  

Glue, glue, and more glue.

I recently was on Chesapeake Light Craft'Craft ' website, where I ended up watching a whole series of YouTube videos on building your own stitch and glue kayak.  I don't know that I learnt anything new, but I was nevertheless enhanced through the whole thing.   The best part had John Harris looking straight into the camera, saying the words, "remember," cue  deep, deep reverb, "sanding is FUN, is fun, is fun, is fun, is fun..."  That was pretty much all that went through my head whilst sanding the hull.  

Adding thwarts, rubrails and other
 sundry bits help flesh out the hull

Next up, it was time to glue a bunch of stuff onto the boat, it from the aforementioned "structurally complete" state to the afore-alluded-to "more usable" state. Among things that were glued on were the skeg, rub rails, quarter knees, dagger board trunk, thwart supports, and probably a few other other bits and pieces that I have since forgotten about.  Each of these is individually a physically small part, but each serves an important function.  Less intuitively, and more transformationally, each part really helps to fill things out visually. What once was  the hollow shell of a hull, takes on new robustness and soon assumes the form of a sturdy little boat.

Now, what happens next will violently challenge that notion of sturdiness....

But that's the subject of another post.