Almost starring to look kayak-like

This week we finally managed to glue the sheer clamps to one of the kayaks. It took us a little bit longer than we expected to get to this point.

Firstly it was a bit awkward to cut out the 17ft long panels. We didn't have a bench long enough to hold something that long, so we had to drape the panels over two benches and a table saw. Their heights were similar but not really all that close, further complicating things. Even with everything clamped down one of us needed to hold the panels still while the other cut. Despite out precautions we still went though a few blades though this process. At one point we had run out of blades and had to finish cutting the panel using a hand saw (see below).

After the fiasco with the sheer clamps last time we had to do a bit of cleanup/catchup work to get them into shape to be glued. It seems the epoxy mix was a bit thin and ran out of some of the joints, and needed to be re-glued.

This leaves us with one kayak's worth of panels ready to start stitching and the second kayak's set of materials is ready for the sheer-clamp-gluing process that we did this week. In fact we might have been able to glue both this week but for the lack of both time and clamps. I think we're going to need to get a few more clamps if we plan on continuing work on both kayaks in parallel.