I built the inner stem and included it. I did what I could not to damage it, and now as I come to the final stages of this build, I was wondering what it’s purpose is and how to handle the inner fiberglassing as it sits proud of the rest of the boat!
Lou
you will coat over the inner stem with thickened epoxy mixed with wood flour (you can also use microballoons) so that it is in a creamy state like a fillet (i recommend also wetting out the fillet area with unthickened epoxy before this step) and then use a fillet stick (or spoon) to creat a nice curved/filleted surface over the top of the inner stem into the adjoining hull.
then you can glass over it when you glass the inner hull. you may need to cut a seam into the glass to get it to lay nice and neat over the smoothed inner stem.
the picture below, if you enlarge it, shows what the end looks like after the fillet was placed over the inner stem
i hope that helps
h
Howard,
Thanks for the picture and description. Understand about putting the thickened epoxy over the inner stem to insure a nice flat contact to the covering fiberglass. My question relates to end of the inner stem, the “hook” that will stick into the deck when the two halves are connected. Does it just act as a “key” that locks the two halves together? Sorry, tried to blow up the picture but the resolution was not sufficient to see how you handled that area.
Lou
Oh,
i think i understand the question now. any part of the inner stem that sticks up beyond the shear line, simply cut off with a saw blade.
sometimes you actually have to actually cut it down a bit further (lower than the shearline) depending on how you angled the strips at the joint of the hull and deck…so that the deck at the end mates with the hull with no interference fron the internal stem.
basically, don’t let the inner stem of the hull interfere with the deck/hull joining.
howard
Howard,
Planning to do the work today. Think everything is understood. FYI, I also had reached out to Nick who basically said the same thing, “you can cut off the part sticking out past the sheer line and install it onto the deck to act as an inner stem. " Wish I knew that when I worked to take out the forms without damaging the hook!” 
Another question for you. The guillemont deck has the center strips coming to a peak, or at least that is the way I had to work them to get the strips to fit. (See pic) This results ina triangular recess on the inside of the deck. When I glass the inside of the deck, I was planning to just use a scraper to force the glass into the peak of the triangle recess along the length of those strips. Should this be strong enough? My other option would be to fill the area with thickened epoxy to a point where I can glass over the triangle recess without creating a void.
The other option would be to use a narrow strip of glass shoved into the triangular recess first then glass over that with the full length glass.
Which option would you suggest.
Hi Lou,
i recommend that if you have any acute recesses that you make a small fillet to allow the cloth to transition smoothly. i use microballoon putty…becuase it is easy to sand but you can use woodflour as well.
to keep things neat, i recommend masking off the areas with blue tape. then apply the fillet. keep the fillets small…you are just trying to ensure no crease of the glass. you can also use the technique to fill in any larger ‘gaps’ that sometimes show up between strips on the inside.
the picture below is showing what i mean by masking. this is the hull of a microbootlegger and the recesses are where the chines are hard and forms a recess on the backside of the hull along these hard chines. the rest of the blue tape is ‘gaps’ on the inside where the strips did not mate perfectly and were too wide to expect to be addressed by the wetting out process …that can handle smaller imperfections:
the next picture shows the fillet after it was applied and blue tape pulled off:
the fillets were sanded smooth (easy becuase this material is microballoon-based) and then final glass applied over it:
when doing this work, its a good idea to use tape across the hull to ensure the hull pieces stay in the right dimensions. they will naturally want to spread out/become wider. so you don’t want to accidentally have this filletting lock in the wrong shape. do the filletting and then apply the blue tape across the hull so width is correct before the fillet fully cures.
hope that helps
h
