Cedar Strip Kayak Building: Two steps forward, one step back.

After stripping the entire deck and making the cockpit recess I was really bothered by the joints along the back recess and the deck. There were some big gaps in the joint. I filled them with Elmer's Wood filler but it ended up looking like a pretty poor stripping job. I didn't think that I could really do anything about it until this morning when I decided to cut out the back of the recess and strip it all over again. I took a razor saw and cut along the joint after marking it out, and then I made a cut across the recess. I re-stripped it, holding the strips together with duct tape until the Gorilla Glue cured, and then sanded it down. I completed it in a day, and other than the difference in color (I ran out of dark Western Red Cedar) it looks a lot better. There are some small gaps in the joint but I think after a small amount of filler it won't call attention to itself. This just demonstrates how with stripping there are many ways to correct the mistakes as you go along.

As far as the hatch decorations go it was a big step backward. I completed the moon face and prepared to glue it to the deck. First I marked out the deck and brushed some yellow glue (Titebond II) onto the backs of the veneers. Then I laid the veneers down onto the deck. I've never worked with veneer before so one thing I learned is that if you apply glue to one surface of a veneer it curls up and becomes almost impossible to work with. I tried taping it down with packing and duct tape but just ended up making a big mess. Then somehow the pieces didn't fit together anymore. So I ended up pulling it all off and soaking the pieces in hot water to get all the glue off. I scrubbed down the deck again to get the glue off and sanded it down. The veneer cutouts recovered OK after they had dried. Then I thought I could stick them together using some tracing paper as a "backing" with spray adhesive. I could then apply the whole thing to the deck with the paper on it, paper side up, and after the glue had dried peal the paper off. But the pieces still wouldn't fit and it ended up breaking apart and making a big sticky mess, so now I have to cut out all new moon pieces again. Plus now I need to order more veneer for the back hatch decoration.