Wooden Boat People

By McKenzieDriftBoat.com

Which epoxy?

Hey, I'm back on my bottom replacement project and I'm trying to figure out which epoxy(ies) to use.

From reading past posts, I need to scarf the oak chines and the plywood bottom with a gap-filling epoxy. Then, I need to use some sort of penetrating epoxy to stabilize the bottom edge of the old plywood sides. And I'll also need to do some some hull fairing and filling of screw holes.

Can I use one epoxy to do it all by adding the appropriate amount of filler for each application or do you guys reccommend a different epoxy for each task?

By the way, I already have some Smith's CPES from other projects that I was planning to use for the penetrating epoxy.

Thanks for your help,

Jack

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dave Z on March 31, 2011 at 6:45pm

For general epoxy work- RAKA. www.raka.com I've used this on countless projects and 6 boats.

Good prices, hard to screw up 2:1 mix ratio. fast shipping. Different hardeners for low temp and fast/slow/medium set.

Buy some wood flour or empty your belt sander bag.

To glue a scarf joint, coat it with unthickened epoxy. mix in the wood flour to your pot, make it like peanut butter. slop it on, (you can't use too much) match up your pieces and clamp it, add weight, etc... wait a day or so and pay it a visit. use a scraper to remove the excess, then finish with a sanding block (elbow powered) I beleive I have some pictures of the mess on my blog.

www.thtchronicles.blogspot.com

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Permalink Reply by Jack Rose on March 31, 2011 at 8:54pm

Thanks Dave. Nice blog and nice set of photos on Flickr, too. Are your girls playing fiddle or violin?

I cut the scarfs for my chines, tonight and they look pretty nice. And I've sifted out the wood flour from the sawdust under my table saw.

And all my tools are in order and my pencils are nice and sharp, so enough fretting on my part, I need to just go out, buy some epoxy and do this thing.

Jack

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Permalink Reply by Dave Z on April 1, 2011 at 5:10am

Jack,

you want fine dust, not sure the table saw willl get you fine enough dust. Belt sander bag works great!.

Girls are playing both- classical violin, but at home with me, they play bluegrass! I'm polluting them with fiddling!

Thanks for your kind words and thanks for looking.

Here's a video-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po8RHL49fJI&feature=mfu_in_order...

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Permalink Reply by Dave P on April 1, 2011 at 8:03am

Wow, your daughter plays very well! You also!

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Permalink Reply by Jack Rose on April 1, 2011 at 6:47am

Cool. Looks like you're raising them right. That's the way they do it around here in E. Tn, too. Let the schools teach them classical violin, then when they get home show them what that instrument was really meant for.

Is that a Gibson mandolin? Several of my good friends play in an old time band. One plays a Gibson mandolin and the other plays an old Martin guitar, like in your second video.

As for the wood flour, one quirk of my old table saw is that a small mound of very fine sawdust always ends up in the same spot. I put that through my wife's flour sifter to get the finest of the fine. It worked well when I built this boat, but that's when I learned the sifting trick, otherwise, you're right it can be too coarse.

I've got an outhouse building project this weekend (another E. Tn thing), but I'll be back on those scarf joints, Monday.