It's been awhile....time for filleting

Fillets are put in to fill the spaces between the planks. provide a nice smooth surface for the fiber glass to conform to and glue together the planks. They say it also provides some stress relief by spreading out by providing a gusset-like structure. That might be true for a 4 plank hull, but my boat is 10 planks so the planks meet at a very shallow angle so the fillet is pretty minimal. Here is what it should look like.

You can see the masked area in the bow.

I first masked either side of the seam just even with the wire stitches. Then, I mixed up some epoxy and added wood flour. I mixed in enough wood flour to give a paste consistancy....stiff enough to hold its shape when I made the fillets. Interestingly, the mixture gets thinner over time until it starts to kick and get thicker. I suspect as it heats up it gets thinner until it starts to catalyze. I spread it on with a cut down (narrower) plastic putty knife and smoothed it out with a spoon I got from a thrift store. Note that the stitches are still there. I'll pull them when it sets and touch up the spaces left where the stitches were. I was careful to not get much epoxy on the stitches as it will be hard to pull them out if they are full of hardened epoxy.

Now, for the ugly. The first day I followed other instructions from a major kit maker. They said to mix it up as thick as peanut butter. Maybe that works for them, but I had a real mess. I started with the stern figuring I wouldn't need to look at it if it was a bit ugly.....good thing.

Nothing that sanding won't fix, but it is a but frustrating. The very bow and stern where the planks meet is particularly hard to fillet. I'm sure there must be a clean and neat way to do it...I just didn't figure it out. I didn't work too hard at it, though. It will be enclosed by a floatation tank anyway.