After the grommet and channel were complete, I began assembling the boat.
You can see in this pic and earlier that I painted the interior. I built up a couple different colors using scraps and leftovers of paints from Linseed Oil Paints for depth, before final coat of cream white.
I really enjoyed it. Oil paint is... oily. Requires a very thin coat or the skin will dry and the rest won't, for weeks. Weeks! But if spread thin it'll dry decent in a day. And oil can spread THIN! I learned a trick on this boat. Apply with a junk chip brush, which leaves marks like you applied it with a comb, then smooth/spread with a nice brush. This helps keep your nice brush nice, since only the very tips of the bristles get paint on them. And it feels very nice to slowly caress your boat with the expensive brush, gradually, over its entire surface.
Some people think oil paints are too brittle for boats, they prefer 'water based' chemical paints. They think this because they see cracked DaVincis. If oil paint is oiled with Tung or Linseed oil once a season or so, it remains fresh and vibrant and flexy forever.
And Oil Paints have a luster and richness that 'water based' chemical crap can never match.
Plastic boats. They're alluring because we are advertised them as latest and greatest, and we are told this because plastic boats can be cheaply mass produced while wooden boats require skilled labor and individual construction. But plastic boats are extremely heavy, even kevlar canoes are not significantly lighter than wood. Grapeview Point Boat Works in Allyn, Washington makes a fully wooden canoe pretty much the same size as Ranoed that is precisely the same weight. My own Tamboura is lighter than plastic boats, while heavier than kevlar but only because I built her chunkier than she needed to be for visual balance of shapes. Wood is, in fact, the stiffest by weight material known to man besides the uber fragile carbon fiber.
But we buy plastic boats because don't need to care for them as much. We can cheaply amass enormous varieties of material goods and forget about them except when we want to use them, and we can bang these boats into rocks with reckless abandon, let both Nature and our boats know: we don't give a shit about it. Native Americans cared more for their canoes than we do our own kids, in their bike helmets and knee pads and multiple car seats through the first five years, because not only were they not polluting the canoe's environment with plastics, Native Americans did not hand them over to be indoctrinated for twelve years on devoting the rest of their lives to earning yachts for the global 1%.
Anyway, tirade over, back to the boat. Yacht canoe screw holes require plugging with bungs. Bungs are like dowels, except cut sideways to the tree growth. Dowels are cut lengthwise to the tree growth, as if they are a cylindrical board. If dowels are used as plugs, their end grain shows up as darker against the base wood, and also absorbs water easily which can lead to the plug swelling and cracking the base wood.
If you look close you can see the black bit: that is the bung cutter.
All bunged up.
Then I cut the bungs off reasonably flush with a pull saw, planed them almost perfect with a block plane, and sanded them perfect with a sanding block.
It was at this point I learned something very important to the time frame of completing this project about SystemThree ClearCoat. My earlier understanding was if subsequent layers of epoxy are built up, it is best to put second coat on in an hour of preceeding, and the closer to 24hrs it was before next coat was applied the worse it'd hold. If time frame for subsequent coats went over 24hrs, a builder had to wait 72hours, and sand. So until this point that is what I was doing: applying one coat of epoxy, waiting three days, sanding, cleaning, applying next coat, waiting three days.
But right about here I went on SystemThree's website and found ClearCoat can be recoated as early as still tacky and as late as 24hrs, and sanded in 48. So I began putting three layers on at a time, and waiting two days (in a hot garage) to sand.
Idea is you keep on adding layers and sanding it smooth and flat, until the surface is perfect and there are no spots of bare wood. That is one thing when the project surfaces are flat, but when they are all curved it is another. It took forever. The curved surfaces lead to accidentally sanding through in a place that wasn't thin before. And every time I sanded, I had to carefully shape each tight arc, such as ends of the gunnels or points on the thwarts. And plane out all the drips under the gunnels. I bet I applied 12 coats of epoxy before I was finally confident all surfaces had three complete layers.
I built a paint box for the varnish. It's only needed for the last layer because all till then are sanded, but I also used it for the final layer of paint. Bugs like oil paint! One layer of paint had at least 12 bugs I had to pick out, and the final coat had two in it before I was done laying it down!
I learned a trick for varnish. Normally it is laid with a brush, and sanded, and laid with a brush, and sanded... System3 says three coats are needed on top of their epoxy for full UV protection, I read some pundit say it takes 12 coats of varnish to win at WoodenBoat shows. Every layer gets runs and sags and drips, which are sanded... The last layer though, for full shine, can't be sanded. If it has any runs, sags, or drips...
But if instead of a brush, the last layer is put down with a pad, it doesn't run or drip, and barely sags. I made my pad with three crunched paper towels, another paper towel wrapped around it then taped for a handle, and a section of T-shirt pulled up to the tape.
Well. It still wasn't perfect. There are a few pad stroke lines in the 'plates. I understand why boat companies hire out the varnishing, unless they have a finish department and a fellow that does nothing but varnish. I had fun though, and I am looking forward to doing it again next season or next boat or both.
And just like oil paints vs chemical paints, real varnish has a a natural purity to its tinge that poly or awlwood cannot come close to.
I did seven full coats of varnish on top of the 12 epoxy, IF three with the pad count as one full. One with the pad, four with a brush, then three sets of three with a pad.
I got a MiniCell tractor seat from Guillemot Kayaks. Inexpensive, shipping was cheap, and it came quick. Not as comfortable as the ones from Northstar, which are wider and thicker. And shorter. This was made for an athletic male rear end, legs out straight. I paddle sitting crosslegged in middle of canoe.
So did Native Americans. Or when their knees were still good: kneeling on a blanket in middle of canoe... I read passage after passage written by IndoEuros about Native Americans in canoes: "And in a few powerful strokes he was gone." Bullshit. They weren't like high schoolers at a kegger, burning rubber on their parent's credit card. They lived out there and they saved their energy for paddling all day. 20 light strokes gets you to daily momentum with less energy loss than 10. At all times, starting and going, they took short light strokes that didn't leave whirlpools, cuz there's no wisdom in ostriching across the water.
Anyway, that's what I got. I cut about four inches off the front so I could gather my legs, and cemented 1/2in of closed cell foam underneath so I'd have the same padding under my sit bones as with Northstar's seats. And, this being a handmade yacht canoe, it can't have that CNCed chunk of charcoal grey foam for a seat! I began making a cover for the cushion. Here cutting patterns for the fit. When making two sides the same, patterns can be folded in half to be equalized.
I've been scared of the sewing step for two weeks. But it came out OK. I'll cement it down and maybe wave a heat gun over it to hopefully eliminate last wrinkles.