Applying the second 1/4" layer to the bow went very smoothly. As Renn indicated in the book, I just had to plane a tiny sliver along a short section of each side to make the fit perfect. I applied unthickened epoxy to both sides, then a coating of somewhat thickened epoxy. I used huge numbers of screws and washers to ensure good contact. I applied the screws in the relative order that Renn recommends in the book and it worked great.

Next I installed side framing in locations to frame the approximate front and rear of my pilothouse, and added 2 more roughly centered within the open cockpit area. Those will be used later for mounting things like rod holders, etc.

I cut and scarfed the side panels but glued the scarfs on the boat as others have done. This worked out very well. To ensure that the scarfs were well clamped, I clamped the scarfs with 3/4 plywood with visqueen in between and screwed them tightly. This also proved out to work very well – the scarfs turned out nice and tight.

Because of the length of my boat, I ended up using 3 full sheets and one more piece about 24” long for each side. And now that the boat is taking shape, I can measure the full length - which is 24’ 7”. This is right about the length I had been hoping for.

I mixed up a very thick mixture of glass thickened epoxy to fill the very large and important outer chine joint. Before applying this mix, I painted unthickened epoxy into the joint to ensure good penetration and also to make sure that the liquid portion of the mix wasn't drawn out of the thickened epoxy. After this hardened well, I removed all of the screws and sanded a nice contour along the chine. I used my air powered board sander to help ensure the fore/aft direction was flat.

I finished up by filleting and taping the inner and outer chine joints 2 layers of 10oz glass each. Then 3 layers of 10 oz glass across the transom to bottom joint. Now it’s time for a couple of passes of “fill and sand” to make the hull ready for glass.

As a checkpoint, at this time I have used about 7 gallons of epoxy.