I got the knees installed the other day. I think I can safely say that the installation quality is consistent with the rest of the build. Oh oh.
Perhaps you are noticing all those splotches surrounding the aft knee, pictured above. What splotches? Oh, those. It's just epoxy, with a smidge of wood flour mixed in. I wiped off all the big chunks, but these splotches remain until I sand 'em off, which will happen ever so soon.
You may also note the white spot near the top of the knee above. That has to do with me sanding the top part of the knee down a bit, and that was after I rasped it down quite bit more than a bit. All this because the knee, when installed, protruded above the aft transom just a bit. The experts tell me that the fit of thing varies with each build, and that one must be brave and just sand things and make adjustments and hope one is not spoiling things.
Let's talk fillets. Here's the thing with fillets: you gotta get the mixture of epoxy and wood flour Just Right. Too wet and it will sag after you put it on the boat. Too dry and it doesn't want to be smoothed. In this case, it didn't want to be smoothed: a strong indicator that I still haven't figured out how to judge the right mixture.
So there were these rough, uneven fillets, but at least I had masked them this time, so when I pulled the tape up and smoothed things with a gloved finger moistened with denatured alcohol, the edges at least came out kinda straight. But still. I am not going to win any filleting awards, much as I might want to.
The bow knee fillet came out about the same:
Now that these are in, basic dinghy construction is complete. What's left is a lot of sanding, and some rasping where I accidentally left fillets too rough, and re-spotting with epoxy here and there where I did, or will have done, too much sanding, and also some epoxy here and there where I didn't really get enough applied the first time (this is mostly in the hull interior at some of the joints between the strakes). Followed, of course, by more sanding.
When that's done I'll flip the boat over and do the same sanding on the hull exterior (although, in this case, there's no shortage of epoxy anywhere -- just needs sanding).
People have begun asking me when the boat will be finished. Right now it feels like, uh, 2013. But it's reasonable to hope for September. We'll see.
