The Bear Mountain Boat Shop

Titebond and plastic packing tape. The only place that there were problems were with the stem molds. There wasn't really much glue dripped but none of it was accessible as it was hidden behind Station 8 which is a part of the stem mold (on the Redbird).

thanks

Patrick and I flipped our canoe yesterday and removed all the forms. We were surprised at how difficult it was to remove the stem molds. The Stem molds along with station 8 (Redbird) were tightly in place despite lots of pulling and even tapping with a hammer. The molds had been taped but still were...

The "Cove UP or Down?" and "Staples or None?" threads in the Builders Forum got lots of attention (I thought that everyone was taking the day off). It made me think of another controversial subject. Who's your favorite Gilligan's Island Girl? :eyebrows

We used a stapleless method on our canoe. We didn't have a problem with the hull coming away from the forms (by any more than ~1/8") so we didn't bother with gluing extra blocks to the inside of the hull to hold it to the forms. I kept worrying that it was going to pull away in some places so w...

Just Epoxy. I put on 1 strip and didn't like how it looked so we took it off and decided to go with just epoxy. Advice on making the strips really disappear would be welcomed (the edges were lumpy on the strip we cut and tried to apply).

Thanks!

Hopefully this is a quick question: We'd like to add a couple additional layers of epoxy on the bottom of our hull over the stem area to protect it from abrasion. I assume that the right approach is to lightly sand the current epoxy layer in an area slightly larger than where we will add the new epo...

ProPrep scraper - I've heard lots of good things about it. I'm going to have to look for it.

Thanks!

Dave, I was thinking the same thing (use the support of the forms to make sanding the outside easier). But it occured to me that putting a few of the stations back on the strongback wouldn't be very hard and I could have that stability for sanding the hull later while getting the other advantages. W...

Patrick and I glassed the outside of our redbird last weekend. We had been planning on waiting a week or 2 and then start the sanding process on the outside of the hull and then flip it over and sand and glass the inside. It occured to me today that if we flipped it before sanding the outside there ...

We finished the 4th coat of epoxy around 1:30 this morning. Here's a picture this morning. The surface is like glass (probably could have lived without the 4th coat but we decided we'd stay up late just to make sure there was plenty of epoxy there for the sanding process). There are a few runs to wo...

Patrick and I got up early this morning (an accomplishment all by itself). We started the first coat before 8AM. Here's a picture: http://img.groundspeak.com/cache/30e48c4c-a6b1-49b8-8429-d29f4f14cd77.jpg We just finished the 2nd coat awhile ago and are waiting to put on the 3rd. The 2nd coat seemed...

When you cut out your forms for the various stations, you had (maybe still have) scraps of plywood that are a good match wtih the curve of your canoe. They could either be cut another 1/4" to make up for the thickness of the hull or moved toward the end of the canoe a bit further to create a fo...

It's getting warmer in Chicago. The snow is melting. Humidity in my garage is going up. It's at 35% now (up from 30% yesterday). 83% outside tonight. How high does it need to go before I should worry about fiberglassing this weekend? :confused :frightened

Using West Epoxy...

thanks!

Thanks for all the responses on my questions. I can see that there are lots of perspectives and people use what works for them. This makes complete sense. I have read many sources of input and we will figure out what works for us. We're using West 105/207. We'll try to avoid sanding if at all possib...

Patrick and I will be starting the fiberglassing step this saturday morning (no sleeping in this weekend!). We've put up a plastic barrier on the ceiling and another layer on the walls to contain dust. The hull has been wiped down multiple times and will be again before we start. I think we're getti...