A very significant find was the discovery of a local boatbuilding shop located in Vero Beach. I packed up my manuals, lists of materials and lists of questions and spent an afternoon making a visit to the shop of Bateau.com at Boat Builder Central<\/a>. I was pleased to find a small shop of very experienced boat builders that were able to answer all of my questions, supply me with almost everything I would need and provide me with the support that I might need in the future. The have a great forum with probably the answer to almost any question that has ever been asked about wooden boatbuilding. Now I was already a huge fan of Chesapeake Light Craft<\/a>, but these guys are right here in Florida and they are definitely in the same class.<\/p>\n One of the areas that every builder seems to have an opinion is which epoxy products to select. I chose Marinepoxy<\/em><\/a>, the general purpose epoxy product formulated for Bateau at Boat Builder. It is a 2:1 epoxy which effectively has no amine blush in our climate and is less expensive than the major named brands. I also purchased Silver Tip E-Z Fillet<\/a> and GelMagic Structural Adhesive<\/a> as an alternative for mixing wood flour. I did however end up using wood flour for operations where I would be applying continuous gluing operations without curing, such as most of the fillets inside around the bulkheads and bottom. After some experimentation, I found that I was able to minimize sanding by using Marinepoxy<\/em> with wood flour for fillets and applying a second coat of epoxy immediately.<\/p>\n The only materials on the list that I was not able to purchase at Bateau was the dimension lumber. They provided me the contact of a supplier in Stuart where I purchased sapele<\/em> wood for the keel, rails, combing, carlins and steering wheel mount. Sapele is an African mahogany with a beautiful grain and color. Maritime Wood Products<\/a> is only another hour or so drive and they were able to cut the pieces to my specifications. This also means the rails were the correct length so I did not need to splice the pieces as required in the kit.<\/p>\n The tools are in order, the materials and supplies are all here, the shop is clean and ready. Mmmm. The manual says to build some sawhorses. I have some sawhorses, but the ones they have are pretty sexy! Did I say that?<\/p>\n .<\/p>\n\n\n Ok, it took a few hours, but now we LOOK like a boat building shop. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Materials and Supplies After studying and completely digesting both build manuals, I went several steps further and studied about all I could find about stitch-and-glue epoxy construction. I did find a few details that vary, but it appeared very straightforward … Continue reading OK, Let’s Start Building<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/teamloewen.com\/CocktailClass\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/IMG_2288-225x300.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n