That little fish-tail thing the stern is doing bugs me. It’s above any reasonable waterline, so it probably doesn’t actually matter. And in any event the skeg will control any yaw it might introduce (which means that if it does come into play, the combination will exact a drag penalty). It bugs me. It’s a fraction of an inch, but it’s there.

I tried taking a very thin slice off the sheer clamp taper opposite the “swerve.”

It didn’t help. Removing wood from the taper actually made the issue worse when I forced the ends together. I corrected that, and some of the original problem, by doing just the opposite: I inserted a thin wedge between the tapers and glued it all up with modestly thickened epoxy. At the bow end, I loosened the screws holding the sheer clamps together and drizzled epoxy in there as well before tightening everything back down. (I removed the clamps holding the sheer clamps to the vertical supports because I wanted them for duty on the stern; I drove screws through small wooden tabs, the side panels, and into the vertical supports — what’s four more small holes in a hull with hundreds?)

Then I got down to the day’s real business, and one thing led to another. Tonight, Old Man Takes a Couple of Naproxin.

Fillets are — as expected — an art unto themselves. “Thicken the epoxy with wood powder until it is the consistency of peanut butter.” That instruction probably means peanut butter when it is fresh from the store, not after it’s been opened and stored in the ‘fridge (do you, too, refrigerate your opened peanut butter?). Anyway, that description suggests to me quite a range of thicknesses. For fillets, thicker is better, up to a point. Among the things fillets are supposed to do is cover the inside manifestation of copper stitches. I do not think I did a proper job of covering all (or most) of the stitches. But I proceeded on. I bet that fault will not sink me.

I started at the bow end with the unseen surfaces forward of the bulkhead. I made a mess. Then I fixed supper and picked up the tools a couple of hours later, doing more fillets behind the office and finally in the office. At least one source says to tape the seams while the fillets are uncured. Well, I might as well. So I did. The fillets from before supper were still grippy at two hours and change. The fresher ones were more so. Either the manual, or John Harris (Mr. Chesapeake Light Craft) in his how-to video, suggests that while taping the seams is a good time to apply epoxy to the entire inner surface of the hull. So I did that, too (epoxy covers better than I thought, a thin coat will do; I probably used to much on many square inches). Thus does one thing lead to another. And to Naproxin.

On the theme of excess, I probably used too much epoxy in the seam tape (the fillets take what they take). Typical newby mistake, right? I mixed up several batches of 50, 75, and 100 grams of resin with appropriate amounts of hardener. Toward the end, I discovered that if the foam brush doesn’t force the epoxy into the weave, a gloved finger does. So I probably used more supplies than necessary trying to force the soft brush to do something it really couldn’t. After all has set for a short while, I see small pools of collected epoxy glistening near the keel line by the light of the overhead LEDs (they look like C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate).

Three and a half hours later, with all joints filleted and taped and all surfaces coated, I really just wanted to call it a night — the angles are awkward and the whole process unfamiliar and therefore tense — but some of this particular mess really needed to be cleaned up tonight lest it become a feature of the basement for all time. Denatured alcohol does a fine job of cleaning up epoxy and its components before they set (I don’t know about after, but I have my doubts). It takes care of gummy skin and gummy tools just fine. There’s some clutter whose clearing will give me an easy start tomorrow.

Leftovers.

A few inches at each end ask for more attention. I applied extra tape to the inside of some of the scarf joints because I could, and because I didn’t thicken the epoxy inside them when I was supposed to. A little extra strength right there makes me feel better and cannot be a bad thing. I am thinking about borrowing a technique from my long-ago kayak construction days (not stitch and glue, but still…) and avoid the most awkward tape placements by doing end pours. Much depends on how things look tomorrow.