The epoxy and fiberglass from yesterday was trimmed off the bottom of the bottom panel. Then the bottom panel was set in place and carefully centered in the hull. Alignment marks were drawn on the hull and then the bottom was sanded, cleaned and the bottom of the panel and the hull were painted with Bilgekote.
Now I wasn't able to cut the angle on the bottom panel to match the hull, so after painting all four edges with epoxy and carefully aligning the bottom panel up with the alignment marks and putting some peanut butter along the front edge of the panel it was pushed forward into place. Then I made several small batches of peanut butter and pushed it down into the gap between the hull and the panel, smoothing it out level.
The sides panels had their bottom and end edges coated in epoxy, peanut butter applied to both ends and then one at a time aligned at the forward edge, squared up, set exactly vertical and two screws were driven to hold each one in place.
Then the stern blocking was installed. Once again epoxy the edges, peanut butter, alignment and screws. I pushed peanut butter into the gaps between the blocking and the stringers.
Finally I made two more batches of epoxy. The first was used to pour on the outside of the side panels to help fill the last of the small gaps in the peanut butter between the hull and side panels. The other batch was used to coat the top of the bottom panel and again fill the small gaps.
In the above photo, if you look very carefully you can see the drain holes I've left in the rear blocking panel. There's two in either corner of the fuel tank space and one either side for the empty chambers between the side panels and stringers.
Tomorrow I'll finish coating the inside of the side panels and fillet and fiberglass the joints. Friday I'll be able to paint the three chambers between the stringers with Bilgekote.
I didn't get to any of the cuddy sanding and painting tonight, that will be worked on tomorrow. Probably not a bad thing for the paint to have more time to dry.
3 Hours