Building a stitched lapstrake canoe - Removing stitches and re-filling the seams

July 30, 2007
Removing stitches and re-filling the seams -- 3:40 hours


Today I began by cutting off all the stitches. 2 cuts on the outside close to the wood, then I pulled them out from the inside with needle nose pliers. The places where epoxy had seeped into the hole made it hard to remove the wire and I really had to pull on it. Where the wires went through the bulkhead fillet I just cut the wire and then filed it down to the surface.

There were a lot of places where the wire caused the epoxy fillet to form a hill around the wire so I used a rounded edge file to smooth the fillet in preparation for re-filling the seams. There was a lot of copper on the floor when I was done! Sitting under the hull now looks like a planetarium due to all the small pin holes from the removed wire. I read ahead in the book to see what to do with all these holes. They get filled with epoxy mixed with wood flour -- just like spackling drywall. He suggests doing this after the gunwhales are installed, but I plan to do that tomorrow.

Here is a seam before I re-filled it with thickened epoxy, and after. It is a nicely coved bead now, although I did have some more drips that I had to wipe off and there are uneven places that I will need to file and sand.

Here's a movie made from images taken every minute as I removed the stitches and re-filled the seams,
time invested today 3:40: