This is picture of what you do not want.
I thought that I had all of the glue sanded out. I applied sealer coat of epoxy and these blemishes showed up everywhere (the milky looking spots). The surface felt smooth prior to the epoxy. I figure the glue had saturated the grain of the wood in places.
Oh well, sand it all off and start over.
Not the two parallel ridges running at a 45 degree angle to the deck. This was a piece of 4 oz. cloth that was given to be. I was told it had some manufacturing flaws in it but not to worry, they would hide with the fill coats. NOT SO! This took HOURS to sand out and reapply more fill coats. This was after I had applied 2 fill coats in an effort the protect the fabric.
ARGH!!
Another view of the same problem. Note how it conveniently repeated itself about every 12".
I ended up sanding into the fabric a bit. I didn't like to but I had no choice, if it to appear fair. I wet sanded the deck the day after the application of the fill coats. 150 grit on a pad sander (large area) and by hand on the perimeter and weird shaped places.
3-4 fill coats of epoxy and sand. And yet, sand and fill some more. I must have 6-8 coats of epoxy trying to remove this pattern.
You can get a good idea of what the deck looks like though!!
I got a little overzealous with the bending of the strips. This caused some minor but unsightly gaps on the deck. Next time I will stick with the 3/8" strips that I used to lay out the pattern.
This is the glue that saved my bacon.
It is an industrial version of super glue. It is available at most upper-end woodworking shops. It sticks like crazy and you can cure it instantly with a shot of the accelerator.
Some of the tools I used on the hull and the deck. Note the small 'nippers'. I used these to pull the staples. They worked great and being spring loaded, they were easy to use.
The small 1" block plane (about $7 at most hardware stores) got the most use of all of my planes. It cuts well and is easy to hold onto.
A bunch of different scrapers filled to different profiles. Try to find ones that have a real solid (stiff) blade. The cheapies that I found at the hardware store were too flimsy.
