The Gluing

Carbon Fiber sleeves hold bungee that holds I-pod

Fillets provide strength to the joins between hull panels. The fillet is made by using an epoxy & wood flour mixture and spreading it in the seam between two panels. Much is written about fillets, the manual stresses the importance of good fillets, the forum discusses various techniques & tools used to get perfect fillets, and many builder blogs highlight the process.

Arriving at the point where I needed to start filleting my seams I had read everything I could find on the subject. It really boiled down to a few simple concepts.

Work Efficiently - I needed to plan the process, there are some great videos on YouTube that show the steps of filleting the seams in various boats. I watched the videos and mentally applied the techniques to my boat. Every process has bottlenecks, and I looked for the steps that had the potential to slow down the operation. I arranged my tools as I would need them, made sure I had plenty of mixing cups on hand, and cut my fiberglass tape to size.

Work Neatly - Simple steps like running a strip of tape along both sides of the seam with the desired width of your fillet in between kept my cockpit from becoming one very large fillet.

Work Quickly - The good news is that the Chesapeake kayaks can be done in sections, with the bow, cockpit, and stern sections separated by the bulkheads, I didn't need to attempt the whole boat in one go. However, once I started filleting a section I had to move quickly to get my epoxy mixture out of the cup and into the boat before it stated to firm up and became unworkable. Each fillet was then covered with fiberglass tape, while still wet, and the tape was wet out.

The manual presents two different approaches to addressing the copper wires when doing your fillets. The first approach is to leave the wire in place and run your fillets over the wires and encase them in epoxy. The twisted section of the wire on the outside of the hull is snipped off and filed down once the epoxy fillet has cured. The second approach is to tack the seams together with small dabs of epoxy/wood flour mixture. These dabs are placed between the stitches, and once cured will allow you to remove all the wire stitches before filleting.

I tried both techniques, on the 17LT I left the wires in, and on the 16LT I removed the wires. On any subsequent builds I will certainly remove the wires. The manual says when you leave the wire in, just cut it as close to the outside surface of the hull as you can and file down the nub. The manual does not say what a pain in the butt this is.