How Long to Dry

[Wood Boat]

Originally Posted by PAR

Use scarf joints to tie the stringers and other fore and aft structural members together. The joint you have drawn will create stress risers at the corners on the inside of each joint, which is weak. 8:1 or better ratio for the scarfs.

CPES and other penetrating epoxy products, only work if the whole piece is completely surrounded and entombed in the cured plastic. If it is just painted on the available surfaces it will trap moisture, that has gotten in from the uncoated sides and you'll speed up the process. If you can't disassemble and encapsulate each piece, then use paint and keep it in good shape.

Yes scarf joints were looked at but both I and the engineer agree that with a 1" router bit that the curvature created in shaping the wood and the fact that the join will be approx 550mm long will negate the need and dificulty in creating accurate scarfe joints. It was definately a big concern went theinital thought came about. As the the epoxy sealing I dont belive that painting the existing structure as seen in the pic will be a prob as there is a good amount of epoxy fillet protruding from the base of the stringers also if it were to be lifted and coated would that not mean that such a process would require almost 100% dissasembly of the structure making it not a rebuild but a build using second hand material that is already cut to size?
If I was going to do that then I would just design and build from new. As it is its already turning out to be bigger than Ben Hur and expensive. The only reason for the continuation of the project is the fact that the money has been spent on material already and building from scratch would be a similar $$ figure

Cheers For everyones help, opinion and advice your conserns are really making me double check and think through all processes and methods and is much appreciated.