Everyones always picking on me. :-)

I'll give my reasoning for an end pour instead of a block of wood. With the up-swept ends of my designs I have trouble getting tape around the corner all the way into the ends. Since I can't get tape up there, I want something that will make a very good bond between the deck and hull at the end. The end pour assures that there is wet epoxy making good contact to both pieces. I feel that it is hard to assure this good, solid glue contact with a wooden block or dammed end fill.

Many of my designs also have a large amount of crown on the deck right to the end so in order to fill the end completely I would have to make a block of wood for both the deck and the hull. And then these pieces should be well glued together when assembling the deck and hull. I don't want to be messing around with glue at this stage, I just want to get the two pieces aligned.

I also don't like the idea of a solid block of wood in the ends. Large chunks of wood are not dimensionally stable even with perfect encapsulation in epoxy (which is hard to assure). If the block tends to expand and contract over the years (it will) it may crack the epoxy encapsulation. If the epoxy cracks, you can be sure water will penetrate into the block of wood and start rotting it. You also don't need to worry about sealing the inside of the hole if you drill through the pour for a grab loop. The ends of the boat are slow to dry at the best of times without a sponge in the end. While this degradation will take a long time (years), I think it is bad practice to build the potential into the boat. I have this same complaint with sheerclamps. Epoxy is not that good at waterproofing relative large chunks of wood.

I debate the idea that the end pours are heavier than wooden blocks. I load up the epoxy with enough micro-balloons, that the density is very low. If you need to use much thickened epoxy to fill any gaps around a wooden block you lose most of your gains even assuming you use very low density wood. I end up with 3 or 4 fluid ounces of resin in each end (this makes about 1 cup with the micro-balloons).

I don't find the end pour at all messy. Yes, I need to stand on a chair if I don't have hatches, but the dump cup works very easily and cleanly. My hands don't touch the epoxy. I don't even need to wear gloves. I just look in the hatch, lower down the cup, and pull a string, and dump. I leave the cup hanging for a while to give the goop time to run out.

I can do this in any weather at any latitude because with the end sitting in a 5 gallon bucket of hot water the epoxy will kick off within an hour regardless of the air temperature. Even if the epoxy kicks off hard and heats up, it doesn't hurt the boat because the end is sitting in a 5 gallon bucket of water which would have to boil away before the boat got too hot. All I ask is that it isn't actively raining at the time I do the pour. Snow wouldn't be a problem.

There are certainly other methods that are just fine, but I don't find the end pour difficult or heavy enough to justify changing my ways now. It works, it's reliable, it' lightweight and it's easy. What more do you want?

: I'm not ganging up on Nick, Nick has a lot of great ideas - the end pour is
: not one of them unless you live in Florida.

: I also use a block of wood, then I tape it off like a dam, and fill any gaps
: with thickened epoxy. I sand it flush to the hull sides. later when I
: attach the deck, I use thickened epoxy at the ends and tape them down.