oh, my, goodness.
They say kayaks take a lot of sanding but GOOD LORD ! ! ! ! ! !
I sanded with the power sander for a marathon SIXTEEN HOURS! With 60, 100, 150 grits. Then I (as per instructions) went over it with a wet rag and hand-sanded along the grain with 100 grit (to give the epoxy "tooth" to bond to).
My hands and shoulders (yet again) are sore. There was dust EVERYWHERE. I made good use of the respirator. The dust colletor bag on the power sander made some great wood flour for use in future dookie schmutz.
After each grit I thought, wow, THIS is awesomely smooth.
It does look good. And it does feel good. But damn I am tired.
As I expected/feared, sanding did reveal some thin spots and some gaps in the wood where I had fit the strips together imperfectly. I dookie schmutzed those and left it over night to cure. There is a seriously messed up spot on the end of the stern :( .... the wood got so thin that the inner stem was revealed. It looks kinda bad, but kinda neat in that you can tell how the boat was put together there. I tried to spackle stuff over it, but it didn't work so well (aesthetically). Oh well.
Here are some pictures.
Oh yea, and before I started sanding, I had to plane the attached outer stems into the rest of the hull. That was kinda fun, but extremely hard work (both difficult and a serious workout!) (ok, I'm a block plane convert!).
Here are the finished stems.
and finally a neat photograph steve took.