My first lessons and advice on kayak building

Even though I am only a few days into building the kayak, I can offer some advice and 5 hot tips: 1. do not use too much epoxy 2. do not use too much epoxy 3. do not use too much epoxy 4. do not use too much epoxy 5. do not use too much epoxy

Last night I spent 1.5 to 2 hours trimming the fibreglass epoxy from the edges of the glued butt joints. When glued, the fibreglass extends past the edge of the panel by about 1cm. After the epoxy hardens, you have to trim this. However, I had a significant amount of epoxy leak over the sides along with the fibreglass. It took quite a while to trim this away, and it is very difficult to trim flush against the side of the panel. You probably can’t really sand it either, because you don’t want to sand against the edge of the fibreglass. For the most part I got it all trimmed and relatively flush, but it’s not perfect. I’m hoping that when I go to stitch the panels that the imperfections won’t matter. If they do, I’ll have to do some more work on it.

One other “bad” thing happened. Some epoxy got underneath the panel. Normally this is okay because there is plastic between the panel and the plywood workbench. However, some epoxy was pushed underneath and to the side so much that it got between the panel and the plywood. This caused a bit of plywood to be glued to the panel. I cleaned this up with an edge and sandpaper. Hopefully it won’t be noticeable later on.

I also tried heating my garage with a 1500W heater. The outside temperature was around 7C. The heater didn’t raise the temp any more than 1 or 2C (my garage is no insulated). I’ll be taking the heater back to Home Depot. To help with applying the epoxy I will do two things. First, I’ll heat the resin and hardener prior to going out to the garage. Secondly, I will try and warm up the work surface (the butt joints on the panels) prior to applying the epoxy.