Step 5: Gluing the Parts Together

Once the spreader brace was in place the boat started to take on very sleek and beautiful curves. This was the shape I was looking for, now it was time to start to glue this boat together.

I started by installing some quarter inch nuts, bolts and washers to keep the sides where I needed them to be. I drilled the corner seams where the side panels meet the bottom panels and bolted the two pieces together. See the process here.

Once that was complete I mixed up what is known as peanut butter. A mixture of epoxy and wood flour and started to fillet the pieces together. I did not fillet the entire seam, I only glued between the bolts and zip ties. This held the hull together well enough so that after curing it allowed me to remove the nuts, bolts and washers and to cut and remove the zip ties.

Once that was complete I was able to complete the filleting of the seam

Here we can see the peanut butter filling the seams. I used a wooden spoon to create a nice curved fillet.

Here we have a view of the bow. A lot of peanut butter went in there. You can see the zip ties and the bolt heads that held everything in place while the epoxy cured.

Here we can see the bow and sides once they were filleted. The braces are holding the boat's shape.

This is peanut butter, the glue that holds everything together. How strong is the peanut butter bond you ask....well

I glued two pieces of plywood together with about a two inch overlap and tried to break the bond. As you can see it was the plywood that gave way and not the epoxy/wood flour joint.

So here she is, the shape is just what I was looking for and here you can see the fiberglass joint made on the plywood side. It is really starting to look like boat. You might have noticed that the boat is being built on the second floor of the shop. The crane in the upper left is how she's getting on the trailer.

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