I have some questions about marine glue ups and finishing, and a bonus question about 3-D plastic printing for anyone who’s going to take pity on me:
I’ve been doing a lot of epoxy work for the last few weeks, prepping all the parts for the canoe pedal drive and I have to be honest it is not my favorite type of work.
Right now, my process for building the drive box is a three-step glue up, waiting a day between steps, and then I saturate the whole thing with epoxy, and then I wait a week for it to cure to where I can safely sand it before applying the water based poly which I chose simply because it allows me to do all the varnishing in one day.
I can literally build the whole canoe faster than I can build these parts, so I’m looking for ways to speed up the process!
My first thought is to use Titebond 3 for the glue up and then reinforce the inside corners of the Drive box with epoxy fillets or possibly just a beveled 45° piece of wood with more Titebond. I feel comfortable with gluing the perimeter blocking and inside channel blocking this way, but I’m not sure if I can trust Titebond for the plywood butt joint at the corners? It’s critical that none of these joints ever fail. So, do we trust Titebond for this and if so, is the water clean up on that glue sufficient to prevent surface discoloration when I later saturate all of these surfaces with epoxy?
Thanks for any advice. I don’t do a lot of this type of work, and I wanna get the system as clean as possible before I unleashed it on my students.
Bonus question: if I 3-D printed the Drive box out of plastic, would it be strong enough to guarantee that it won’t fail?
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