First Canoe

[Jim Dodd]

I hope you have your strongback, secured to your saw horses.
I use Fish line, (203 ) to align forms. I leave it on, until I'm stripped close to center. Nice to be able to check alignment while stripping !

Just be very minimal with your glue !
It's not fun to scrape excess glue, especially from the inside.
You only need enough glue to hold the strips together, until the epoxy takes over.

It took me a few canoes, before I realized that !
Oh, My first canoe ! Took me days, to get the Yellow glue, scraped and sanded.
Then the Yellow glue, still showed through the resin !, ( Polyester resin at the time)

Jim

PS ! I use C-clamps to hold my forms to the cleats. I can easily adjust on the fly, and I won't need the clamps, until I take the hull off the forms anyway.

Looks great !

 

[WoodsNWaters]

@Jim Dodd
The 5/8" connecting plates have 4 screws up into the strongback and 4 screws down into the sawhorse. The sawhorses are ones I copied from a post by @Robin and are pretty heavy. It's all on cardboard as I saw in one of your posts.

The Titebond nozzle is way too big and I'm looking for a different glue bottle. Even small Titebond bottles have the 3'8" wide nozzle. Every source is clear that it doesn't take much glue. I know that TB isn't required but I know it performs well. I'll review more posts on this forum to see what others recommend. Small, plastic-bristle, discount store "artist" brushes are great for spreading small amounts of glue but obviously tedious for stripping. The wait time for the stem forms means I'm more than a week from the first strip.

There is a line down the strongback, but only a chalkline. The forms bottoms are the same width as the strongback top which should help if I stay centered. When I first used a laser level, I was converted. So very convenient and not deflected by contact with the work.

Thanks
Dave

Oh. Forgot the pic.