I thought I'd post an update on my progress building a Waters Dancing Solace 16 LT for my wife. It's my first boat so I'm going slow and trying to visualize each complete step before I start. It seemed like it took forever before I had anything that looked even remotely like a boat. The kit parts had to be inventoried, all the parts had to be sanded, then glued together then cleaned up then have the edges beveled; the seat was stitched together and then finally the hull panels were stitched up.

There are 10 panels that make up the hull and 8 interior bulkheads to help give it shape. I'm figuring I've got somewhere around 400 stitches in this thing so far. Once the hull was stitched up and all the bulkheads laced in, it really was a beautiful thing to look at, which I've been doing a lot of. The latest step has been to put fillets into the bow and stern ends then glue all the remaining joints from the outside. Placing the fillets into the very tight space at the stern stem was not a pretty sight. Near the ends where there's not much of an angle between the hull panels to get epoxy into the joints, I placed tape across all the panel joints from the inside to hold them together. Sort of like a bunch of 'V' shaped straps glued to the inside of the hull at the ends. Of course with the saturated tapes in the hull, all the excess ran down into the bottom to pool around the nearest bulkhead. The bulkheads are all trimmed with electrical tape so I'm hoping I can pop them out of the hardened epoxy when the time comes. (fingers crossed)

Last night, after reading the thread about the scrapers, I got out my carbide scraper and cleaned up all the glued joints on the outside of the hull. It was the perfect tool for the job. It only shaves off the high points and leaves a perfectly smooth surface behind, much more precise and controllable than a sander too. Not to mention the lack of dust, which is s good thing around here these days after breathing nothing but smoke from the wildfires since last Sunday.

Next step is to stitch the deck together, using the hull as a template for the outer edge, then tape and glue the deck panels the same as the hull.

A few frustrations so far:

1. How the heck does anyone do epoxy work without gumming up their hands beyond all hope? I haven't figured out how to handle and place saturated tapes without using my gloved fingers, which means it then gets transferred to everything else I touch. AAUUUGGHHH! Maybe there's an assortment of wet-fiberglass-handling tools I haven't figured out yet. Maybe I can make a big pair of tweezers from a couple of tongue depressors. Have to work on that.

2. Is there a way to keep all the loose strands of glass threads from unraveling off the ends of the tapes? They come off when I place the tape and try to smooth it down so I have to dig them out of the wet epoxy with a little stick, and transfer more wet epoxy to my shears when I pick them up to trim the wet threads off the tape. DOUBLE AAUUGGHH!!

Anyone have any advice?

I've been taking pics as I go but they're the old fashioned kind - on film. I'll post them as I take the time to scan them, but boat building seems to be the higher priority these days.