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:

HOME	1. laying out the planks	2. cutting planks	3. gluing planks	4. rabbeting edges	5. stitching seams	6. shaping hull	7. filleting stems	8. gluing seams
	9. removing stitches	10. filling holes	11. gluing inwhales	12. gluing outwhales	13. glassing outside	14. glassing inside	15. glassing keel	16. decks and seat mounts
	17. installing seats	18. epoxy coat	19. sanding	20. varnishing	21. finishing up	22. launching	storage	BILL OF MATERIALS
	This canoe was built from plans in the book "The Canoe Shop"