Filleting, Part 1 (or, "Dairy Queen Owes Me Big-Time")

I tried laying epoxy fillets along the stem post today.  It's my first-ever experience with filleting, and I was really trying for a strong start.  There are gaps between the panels, so I covered them with masking tape to keep the epoxy from falling through.  And a friend suggested using tape to simplify clean-up after the fillet's applied, so I surrounded the fillet area with more tape.

Then it was on to the instructions.  The epoxy here is not the pure, transparent fluid I've been coating panels with; here, it should be thickened with silica powder and miniscule glass bubbles.  Wharram recommends a consistency like "soft ice cream." Being American, I instantly thought "Dairy Queen" and went with it.  What a hassle!  You can't manipulate something like that, you can only pour it.  I poured, trying to get it to flow along the seam.  When it ran down the stem post to the bilge, I tried my hand at pushing a liquid uphill with a plastic knife.

As I fought that hopeless battle, it gradually became clear to me that my boat was leaking.  White fluid was dripping out the edges of the masking tape and pooling below.  I tried briefly to contain that mess, but soon realized there would be no Containment, the best I could hope for was Spill Mitigation.

Fortunately, I had had the foresight to lay plastic sheeting below my work.  Unfortunately, that had happened in a parallel universe inhabited by a slightly smarter version of me.  Here in this universe, there was no protective sheeting, only a growing puddle of epoxy directly on the concrete floor of our porch.  I wiped up the mess with some paper towels, grabbed some plastic, and spread it under the leaking hull. 

I then quickly mixed up another, smaller, much stiffer batch of epoxy and stirred it into the dwindling puddle of fluid in the bilge.  The result was a slightly more workable substance that I managed to push into some of the nooks and crannies of the bow.  Finally, I had done the best I could with what I had to work with, and cleaned up.  The score was clearly Epoxy Fillets 1, Rich 0.

Looking back on the debacle, it occurs to me that they may not have Dairy Queen in the UK.  Their standards of what constitutes "soft ice cream" would therefore be vastly different from my own.  Next time, I will try to use a firmer mix, and will post the story of the rematch here.