Rudder/centerboard work and more puzzle joints

Since last update I have been epoxy coating and sanding more parts, and am running out of those.  I've been finishing up the rudder and centerboard by adding  fiberglass cloth to the trailing edges and the top edges.

Then I got a little carried away and started applying epoxy mixed for fairing, but just realized while writing this I haven't put on the dynel cloth on the front edges, so will need to backtrack a bit on that.

I also glued up the puzzle joints in the deck side pieces tonight.  One more puzzle joint glue up to go, where these side pieces are joined to the front piece.  I plan to do that before assembling the jig for the boat, which will take up a lot of my workspace.

Puzzle joint clean-up

Today I removed the clamps from the hull panel glue-up to reveal nice-looking joints.  

Here's the top one with the waxed paper still on it.  The waxed paper peeled off with no problems and didn't even appear to have been used.  So that worked great.

I found it worked well to take off most of the squeeze-out using a hand scraper.

And then the random-orbit sander cleaned things up nicely.  These joints  look like they don't fit especially close, but that's because I rounded the edges slightly before assembly so things would slip together more easily.

Later on I applied epoxy to the puzzle joints in the hull bottom.  I made an impromptu foam brush from part of a roller cover and stuck it in the slotted dowel that was originally the handle for a store-bought foam brush.  That worked much better than my technique yesterday of just using the stirring stick to apply the epoxy. 

This joint is a lot wider, so I clamped it up as shown below.  The 2x4 has a slight crown in the middle, so that when I apply clamp pressure on the ends I end up with pressure across the entire joint as the board straightens out..

Joining hull panels

This afternoon I glued up the puzzle joints in the six hull panels.  It was a tedious job spreading thickened epoxy on both sides of each joint, especially since I was out of little brushes, and had to just use the mixing stick.  By the time I got to the final joints I could tell the epoxy was starting the hardening process.

I clamped all six panels in one stack with waxed paper between the layers.  Tomorrow we'll see how it all worked out.