I shaped the hatch rims for the front and back this hour…

Maybe not a whole hour.. but I pulled all the stitches out… (photo just before stitches pulled.)

The scariest part of the whole construction…. behind me…

The hatches have been cut!  I also mixed up some epoxy and doubled the hatch thickness.  While thats setting up, I’ll go pull some copper.

Now its time to wait… give the epoxy a day to cure and then I can start working on the hatches.  I didn’t add many “stitches” to this temporary deck-to-hull attachment… I cut a roll of saran wrap in half on the ban saw  and wrapped the kayak tight in a few sections. (after cutting saran wrap with a ban saw, bevel cut the “melted” end with a razor blade, thank me later)

The next hour was “tack welding” (with epoxy) all the seams. This will allow me to remove most of the wires fully and discard any metal from the craft. The beads of “ketchup” epoxy were applied with a syringe.

Alignment is key… i didn’t seem to have much to “fudge” here.. it just seem to fit quite nicely.. i’m sure if it wasn’t CNC’d and I had cut out the pieces myself.. there would have been more work here.  I tightened a few wires and was satisfied with the results.

It’s now time to stand back and view your work… ahhhh…

And now for the deck….

Stitch. Stitch. Stitch. Not bad actually…

I ran around all the edges and beveled them per instructed in the manual.