How much effort is involved

I often get asked how much effort is involved in building your own boat. My usual answer is 'twice as much as you think'. In reality it's likely even more. Doing it on your own requires a lot more pre-planning and I don't find myself doing a lot of that. In reality I usually end up figuring it out once I step into the boat. Such was the case this morning.

I had very little wood flour and Cabosil (thickeners used to make epoxy glue) left to work with. Having a look around I really needed to do the fillets along the chine and finish one joint with tape.

Using up the last of my supplies I managed to get about 25' of fillet done. The joint that needs to be taped got a little extra thick stuff to fill the small gaps that remained from when it was glued while the panels were on the strongback.

This is one of two joints that I fixed the day before yesterday. They turned out ok. A few small bubbles that'll need to be ground out and fixed.

A little closer. They're good to go now I think. There'll be three layers of glass go over all of these joints next spring. 

I made a video today, 20 mins unedited to illustrate the amount of effort that goes into taping just one joint.

I'm sure there are better ways but this is the one that seems to work for me. I'm not a very neat worker and there's epoxy flying everywhere. Hopefully I'l improve on that. It's been quite awhile since I last taped a joint on the boat! :-) That's my excuse so I'll stick with it. 

So now I'm right out of materials. I've got no wood flour or Cabosil but they're on order and should be in by Friday. I'm very low on tape and have to wait a few days to order more. The weather's cooling down a bit which in one way is good it gives you more time to work with the epoxy (medium hardener) and bad in others as it takes a lot longer for the epoxy to cure. Oh well, that's life.

Standby.....