Construction begins - gluing the panels.

After taking stock of what was and wasn't damaged in transit, I've worked out I can begin gluing the panels together while I wait for the replacements to be sent from the States as mentioned previously.

I began gluing the panels together on Sunday with the first of the hull strips. Each strip comes in 3 pieces, and need to be glued and 'glassed together to form one long 17 foot strip which are subsequently stitched to form the hull.

Thinking the cement floor of the shed would be flat enough to begin, I started laying the panels out and quickly found that my shed floor wasn't as flat as I'd previously imagined. Having already mixed some epoxy together though, I figured I'd already started and should get to it before it thickened too much and I'd wasted the epoxy.

I think the two panels I ended up doing on the floor will be fine, but to fix the problem and make sure I was working on a level surface, I went and bought 2 trestle tables for $40 each from Bunnings, plus 2 2400x1200 MDF sheets and laid these on top. The effect was so much better and easier that I wondered why I hadn't thought of it beforehand, and also allowed me to work standing up rather than hunched on the ground. Much, much, much easier! I knew I'd try and launch into this before being really ready but thought it'd be OK. Now I'm properly ready and have reinforced the importance to myself of reading the instructions properly before doing too much.

Getting get back to the construction process, to join the panels together, you first wet a bit of epoxy on both sides of the join, then lay a small strip of fibreglass over the top and wet it out. Finally, a piece of plastic is laid over the epoxy once in place, and weighed down to ensure they stay together whilst gluing.

Seeing the epoxy on the wood for the first time has given a sneak peek at what the Okoume will look like once the whole boat is epoxied. Looking good!

The bottle holding the hardener that I threw out was going to cause a problem in that I wouldn't have a suitable bottle to mount the hand pump on - or so I thought! In a stroke of genius I realised that 2l fresh apple juice bottles are the almost the same height and have the same size opening as the 1 gallon resin bottles that the resin is supplied in. It's just a matter of refilling the juice bottle from the milk bottle I'm storing the rest of the hardener in, and Bob's your mother's brother, we're off and racing.
One shortcoming I've had is that I ordered slow-setting epoxy as I'd anticipated I would be building this in the middle of a hot baking Canberra summer where temps can reach 40 degrees in the heat of the afternoon and tend to stay above 30 degrees until about midnight. Dad's kayak took one and a half months to arrive so I figured I wouldn't be getting down to business until at least November. Shipping of less than a week, plus a cold snap over the last weekend to remind us summer isn't quite here yet has wrong footed me a bit. Pygmy gives you the choice of slow (for hot climates), medium (medium, obviously) and fast (for cold climates) setting hardener in their kits. This might be premature, but I'd guess a medium hardener might have been more appropriate.  I've had to put a few little heaters in the shed while I'm working at night, to speed things along a little. Hopefully the autumn sun beating down on the galvanised roof and sides of the shed while I'm at work will create a little oven and effectively bake the stuff while I'm away. The fast hardener needs a minimum temp of 23 degrees Celsius to cure, so I'm sure it'll be fine by tonight and I can glue the rest soon. The strips are quite long so gluing them all in one sitting isn't really possible unless you've got a huge workspace.

One other reason I was a bit hesitant to glue too many was that working only from instructions means you're always a bit unsure whether you're doing the right thing. This way if I screw it up I only screw up 3 or 4 panels rather than all of them. I guess the moments of truth will come tonight when I get home and see how they've come out.

One thing's for sure - Tip #1: Make sure you get a decent work space to do these! So much easier on the tables than the floor!

Oh, and another lesson from the book of Coho - the reason the manual asks for 4 x cheap bristle paintbrushes is that it's pretty much impossible to clean the semi-thickened epoxy from a paintbrush after working with it, it's just easier to throw it out. When it comes to brushes, cheap is good here. Likewise the container used to mix the epoxy and dip your brush in. Tip #2: Start collecting margarine, butter, yogurt, and any other wide mouth plastic container once you decide to decide to build one of these, you'll need them!