Brett mentioned that the chamfer panel, when unscrewed would retain a memory of the shape it needed to bend back to and I was relieved to find out today that as predicted, the chamfer panel screwed back into place (at bulkhead 0) after I had put glue on the bulkheads, a lot easier than it did when originally screwed down into place. Brett and I took over half an hour with various clamps and straps and really had to exert some pressure, and whilst it still took some pushing and clamping and straps I managed to get it back into place in about 5 minutes. Which is a good thing, for obvious reasons but also because it was a hot day and the glue was going off fairly fast. On the way to bulkhead 0 I had to fill the gap whilst gluing down to bulkhead 3. It was fairly easy to fill with the strip I had cut, and the rest of the gap I filled with glue. I also filled the notch that I didn’t need to cut, that took less than a minute. It took longer to cut the piece out than it did to fill it.

So tomorrow I will start to remove all the screws but I will add tabs here and there to make the panels meet evenly along the length of the hull (I have already done some where the unevenness was close to a bulkhead), some will need to be pulled up others pushed down to meet the other panel or a combination of both depending on the lay so that it is as fair as I can get it before I glue the panels to each other and fill the gaps. This will result in less bog needed later.

As I have shown some “fixing” jobs of gaps and mistakes etc, I should add that whilst here and there I have mentioned that there are gaps in panels and there are some minor errors in the kit and I have also mentioned that whilst I have been as careful as I can about the measurements of the bulkhead placement etc, the material and methods are forgiving enough that in many ways close enough is good enough. The closer to accurate you can get things to be the less work there is later to correct it, such as the tabs I will do tomorrow. I can skip this task but it will mean more bog later if I want the boat to look good, which then needs to be sanded and besides being more work, more bog is also more weight. Having said all that, there are times when your best is going to be good enough and obsessing about being exact to the micro-millimetre isn’t necessary and neither is worrying about it.