To securely assemble the jigsaw pieces together, I used epoxy glue (the same substance I used to waterproof and glue my boat). Epoxy can be your best friend or your worst enemy. It works like no other glue I've used before (which is limited to Elmer's, super glue, glue sticks, and wood glue), but if you get it on your clothes, get ready to say sayoonara. To get an idea of what it's like when it dries, think about the old man's cane in the movie Jurassic Park, and how the prehistoric mosquito was trapped in the fossilized amber. Epoxy is transparent and glossy like amber (minus the yellow tint), feels smooth as a pearl, hard as a rock, and could probably kill any insect that comes across its path.
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| Photo courtesy of celebrityscraps.com |
Epoxy comes in two parts--resin and hardener. Both the resin and hardener are liquids, but in order for the glue to activate, two parts resin and one part hardener must be stirred together. Last year when I made my boat, I, being the person of haste that I am, had a difficult time measuring the batches evenly. As a result, I would wake up to find a sticky surface when I should have expected a dry, smooth run with my fingers. Luckily this time around, I've made a life upgrade by using pumps to dispense the glue. The jug of resin has a pump twice as long as the jug of hardener. That way when I make a batch, I squeeze one pump of resin, one pump of hardener, one pump of resin, one pump of hardener, and so forth until I get as much as I need.
Before I mixed the epoxy with cell-o-fill (powder to thicken the glue), I laid the boards down according to how they would be connected. Then I lathered the mustard-consistent glue along the jigsaw edges. I fit the pieces together and laid a paint stick across the seams to pad the wood as I lightly hammered the pieces tightly in place.
The picture below is of the bottom deck of the paddle board.
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| Bottom deck of the paddle board |
I'm making my paddle board at my best friends Meggie and Laura's (my kindergarten classmates) house. At my convenience, there are free weights in their basement from the previous tenants.
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| Using free weights to hold down the boards while the glue dried |
The below are sheer clamps. Rather than explaining their purpose now, which I will do in my next two posts,I'll just tell you what I'm doing in the following photos. The sheer clamps, or sticks you see, are over 8 feet long each. I had to make the sheer clamps twice that length, so I expoxied the scared joints so that I had two extra sheer clamps (this explains scarfing and scarf joints: http://werebuildingaboat.blogspot.com/2011/03/step-4-scarfing.html).
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| Scarf joints on the sheer clamps |
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| Expoxied the scarf joints joints and clamping them down |
These are the sideboards. They'll run along the sides of the paddle board to give the vessel its depth. I glued and joined the pieces (two pieces for each side). Once the epoxy had dried after 24 hours, I cut fiberglass strips and epoxied them down along the seam to create extra sturdiness.
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| Before I epoxied the fiberglass |
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| The fiberglass has been epoxied on and looks completely clear |
After the bottom deck dried, I also applied fiberglass strips along its seems.
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| So much drying going on. |
If you really didn't want to read everything I just wrote, and only wanted to see the photos and read their captions, maybe this will help:
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| I glued these pieces together |
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