On Saturday morning I epoxied the stem laminates and I was a little worried as the temperature was around 53-54F and the Raka fast epoxy has a lower limit of 50F. Everything came out fine as the temperature slowly climbed to about 64F that day.
Saturday night I planned one side of my all my strips to .275in.
Sunday morning at 4:30 AM I couldn’t sleep so I decided to go work on the canoe. I considered running the second pass through the planner but I had a notion that my neighbors my not appreciate it. So I decided to set all my forms. :)
Since I steam bent my stems while the stem mold was fixed to the work bench, I had to trim the ends off the laminates to install the inner stem in on the mold. And that’s when it happened. Measure once, mark and cut. @#$% and #$%*, I cut one of the inner stems 4” too short. I really didn’t want to steam bend another set and then wait another 2-3 days for it to dry then epoxy again. “I know, let’s try the heat gun method”, said the inner voice. No heat gun so I’ll use the wife’s hair dryer. I didn’t even presoak the cypress, I just clamped heated and bent. Came out great! I let the wood cool for about 30 minutes then I applied the epoxy. Back on schedule.
Oh I finally did run the planks through the second pass on the planner. But it was well past noon when I did.