The plan was day one to cut the plywood panels, coat them with epoxy then build the seats. Day two the panels would be butt spliced with drywall tape and then epoxy resin and wood flour was mixed to make putty. Scarf joints would be made for the long boards on the gunwale and glued with putty. Day three the fore bulkhead and seats would be used as construction frames as the panels were attached with temporary screws and shaped with cable ties and copper wires. The outside seams would be covered with duct tape epoxy putty would be spread inside the hull between the cable ties. Day four ties and screws would be removed and the uneven hull seams shaped on the outside. Drywall tape would be applied to both the inside and outside of all seams and a coat of epoxy would be brushed on the tape and very dry epoxy putty would be squeegeed into the tape on both the inside and outside of the hull. Day five touch up the holes and coat the hull with one more coat of epoxy. That was the plan which went quite well except for a few problems.

One disaster occurred while using epoxy that was mixed by weight. I had read you could spread a nice even bead of putty by putting it in a Ziplock bag then cutting off the corner to squeeze out a bead like a pastry chef. The epoxy was curing too fast so, I figured a little less hardener would give me a little more time to get it spread into the proper place. I had built a scale to measure the 2 to 1 weight ratio. My crude scale was a board balanced on a sharpened piece of wood with the resin twice as far as the hardener from the fulcrum. This was working fine until I decided I needed more time and changed the ratio but instead of putting the hardener closer to the fulcrum I adjusted the resin. The putty looked good as I mixed the wood flour into peanut butter consistency then filled my baggie with goop. As I began to squeeze the baggie the putty began to get warm in my hand this quickly escalated to very warm then to hot. When I could not stand the heat I threw the baggie away and smoke began to billow out of the trash can while I worried about setting the rags sawdust and shop on fire.

I tested the online advice about glues, tools fillers joints and fasteners on my prototype. I tried 4 different brands of epoxy resin. I tested wood flour, fumed silica, white all purpose flour and sawdust for fillers. I tried fiberglass, and drywall tape for joint strength. I experimented with copper wires cable ties and dry wall screws for positioning the panels. I tried various tools and ultimately took a minimum of tools: my smallest surform two card scrapers (used instead of sandpaper on green epoxy) my contour gage, a pull saw and metric tape measure. I also packed a handful of screws and some ringed bronze boat nails.