Fillets

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KARKAUAI
Posts: 362
Joined: Sat May 08, 2004 3:06 pm
Location: Hickory, NC / Princeville, Kauai, HI
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Fillets

Post by KARKAUAI »

Aloha, all,
Thought I'd make a note about filleting for those who've no experience yet. On my first canoe, I had a heluva time getting fillets that were smooth and uniform...spent hours cleaning them up before glassing in the bulkheads and ring frames. First too runny a mixture of epoxy/dust, then too much material, then not enough material, then a poor choice in tool to shape the fillets. I had dubbed myself as the world's worst filleteer. This time, I shaped the end of a tongue blade to get the right profile, and used the cake decorater's trick of scooping my thickened epoxy into a plastic sandwich bag and cutting a SMALL hole in the corner (<1/8") to dispense a nice bead onto the joint. Finally, I got some filleting tape (a dense weave nylon I think) to lay over the fillets and smooth them out. By the third one I was confident enough to do it without taping around the joint, and when I pulled the fillet tape off several hours later, I had only a few minutes of cleaning up to do on 8 fillets the whole circumference of the hull!!! I am soooo cool! Now I'm the kahuna of filleting. Hope this saves somebody else all the grief I went through.
A hui ho,
Kent
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