Stripping The Whitehall....and What Glue?

That brown stuff I'm brushing onto the strips is called Plastic Resin Glue.  In my research I found that many types of glues have been used to join the strips together and since the fiberglass cloth with epoxy will be covering the whole thing it's really only being used to hold the boat together until then.

At first I thought I would use epoxy for stripping but then I remembered how difficult it is to sand it off later.  If you have a spot of epoxy glue on a soft wood like cedar you will nearly always sand off a lot of the surrounding wood while you're trying to smooth the epoxy causing a wavy appearance to the boat hull.

Some people have used those yellow wood glues to bond the strips together and there is the thought that it's not a good idea because it's not very compatible with epoxy adhesive but I don't think it would be that much of a problem since once the hull is faired the glue joints are nearly gone.

I have even heard of a guy who used a hot glue gun to put his boat together but I decided to use the Weld brand Plastic Resin.

This glue is stronger than the wood it's holding together, brushes on easily and dries in a few hours. Clean up is with water (before it dries) and once it's dry it sands like wood and looks like wood too!

Plastic Resin Glue comes in a tub and is a dry powder with a consistency similar to powdered sugar. I used a plastic cup and added water to a small amount and it had a pot life of about thirty minutes which was enough time to add about 7-8 strips at a time.

I got pretty good at edge nailing the strips to the previous strip which hides the nail head between the strips. However, every once in a while I would miss the angle and a nail would end up protruding inside the boat which needed to be removed once the boat was flipped over.

As you can see the strips are stiff enough to hang out quite a ways but bend nicely to the form. The motion you use as you're nailing is to bend it slightly to align it then push the strip flush up against the previous one, (giving it a tap if necessary) then finally nail up through to the edge.  Repeat!