Still Stitching, Adjusting and 1st Tack Welds

I am getting back from a mini vacation and doing yard work for about the last 7 days. Finally got some time in the garage to work on the boat. I have just about finished doing the stitching, but I had some trouble spots I needed to redo. Before I worked on that, I had to make some things to help me work in the boat. Since I have the boat on dollies, I made a small platform that raises me about 8 inches. Even with that and my taller work bench that I stand on, you need 4 foot arms to reach in the boat.

Cross bars to hold on to while reaching in.

In the above pictures, I screwed blocks to the cradles. This allows me to clamp some 2X4's to them to act as a safety bar. I can hold onto them with I am leaning in as well as climbing in. I don't see any other way besides climbing in to do some of the work. I will limit myself to those far to reach spots.

Some of the trouble spots are towards the bow. Imagine that! Floor support #3 was a pain and I had to  work on #2 in a couple places. I had to add some extra cable holes to be able to pull the bulkhead down to the bottom panels. 

1st Tack Welds

After I got everything lined up and tied, I vacuumed every thing. I then started to work on the tack welds. In the manual, it recommends using wood floor and cabosil with a 90/10 mixture. So I used a spare plastic cup and used a small scoop to measure things out. 9 scoops of wood floor and 1 of cabosil. I then mixed it up. 

Now I read on one of the other forums a mixture for the fillet mix. I recalled it being adding the same volume of wood/cabosil mix to thickened epoxy. I started out with this on the 1st batch I did tonight and it was slightly runny. On the second batch I added a little bit more and I think this will be a good formula moving ahead. 

Now on to the pastry bags. I bought some on Amazon and they seemed to work good. I need to figure a way to get a consistent pressure when squeezing it out. I started with a small amount cut off the end of the pastry bag, but I would get spurts of epoxy mixture coming out. 

I definitely think practice will make things better and once I can get the cable ties out I don't have to start/stop and start/stop. 

Another thing I did notice was that a flat putty knife works well on the flat bottom/keel joints. It works better than the round Fillet tools I bought from CLCBoats. The Fillet tools worked good on the other joints. 

Below are some pictures of the 1st tack welds. I was able to get the rear transom and bulkhead 8 completed. I will continue tomorrow. When I get to the point of doing the fillets, I think I will tape everything out. I made a little bit of a mess in some spots, but nothing that can't be sanded.