Closing The Clam

 ....is always an "adventure" 😏

It seemed that the hull was too wide for the deck, so I resorted to the type of spreader sticks that I had used in the past. As I got further along, I was able to match the hull & deck more closely, and the two long sticks came out. 

Typical barrage of strapping tape, stretch tape, blocks, and ratchet straps to force it into place. Fortunately, I used RAKA epoxy with slow hardener, because it seemed to take "forever" to get it done.

Blunder Time: The epoxy didn't cure overnight! 😞 I used a type of "fairing filler" that retarded the cure, and when I looked at it this morning, the halves were separating. It pulled apart easily, but it was a bear cleaning away the chewing-gum-consistency epoxy.

While rassilin' with the fit, I noticed something peculiar. It looked like the hull was narrower than the deck, but when I used ratchet straps, the two halves came together, Nothing had shrunken-the deck had curled. The thin 3/16" strips may be more susceptible to wood movement, but on the other hand, the wood may have moved anyway, and it would have been even harder to to get back in shape if I had used thicker strips. I never had quite this much trouble until I started using 3/16" strips. This time, I used colloidal silica filler instead of that pink junk, medium hardener, and all my ratchet straps. It worked!

The interior reinforcing strips went as usual.

After all this was done, the deck aft of the cockpit area seemed a little too "flexible", so I added a piece of fiberglass to the underside.

Hull Work

Work is the operative word here 😉 

Spent the entire day yesterday sanding the hull, so that I could fiberglass it this morning, before work. The glassing job went routinely. I opted for only two 2" reinforcements at the ends.

On the interior, I filled the stems in with dookie and 'glassed in three sections, as usual. I saw that the ends of the stems extended at least 2" into the interior, so for the first time, I'm going to skip the "end pours" of epoxy, and simply drill through the wood for the rigging. 

'Glassing the underside of the deck went routinely.

On second thought, those 2" reinforcing strips looked pretty sparse, so I added 4" strips on top.