Pulled the cap last night. I'm planning to core the entire cap and widen the last 4-5 feet by splitting it down the center. Looking through lots of other builds it appears that getting the newly cored cap to follow the existing sheer line isn't a problem? The cap was much more flexible than I was expecting. Should I measure the sheer and block the cap to match before coring? Or will 1/2" of coring not make it rigid enough to worry?

When people say they glassed there cap back on what exactly did they do? I'd like to permanently attach the cap but don't want to glass the exterior of the hull sides. Would a bead of thickened epoxy along the cap to hull joint be enough?

I had the same thought when I set my liner back for the last time. I cleaned and rough sanded the top of hull sides and inside of liner. Screwed it off when I bedded to stringers then pulled the screws and wedged the joint with 3/8” shims. I shot System Three Gelmagic in the joint, pulled the shims and screwed it off again. Seems pretty solid to me when I have pulled screws and leaned into it.

Temporary screws and epoxy glue, take screws out next day. Radius and tab underneath. On there forever!

The boat progress has been slow the last month or so. I've been working on splitting the gunnel cap and putting coring in. One side is cored and hopefully by next week I'll have the other side split and cored as well. I've been using all of my scraps coosa to patch together the coring which takes longer but is nice having less waste.

More pics

That old coring is a bitch to take out when its in good shape :) ... I like how your widening the gunnel cap thats going to work out well I have a feeling...and good on you for using up all those scraps...that stuff aint cheap!

strick

The resin in the balsa coring was still gummy after all those years. It would plug up the sandpaper almost instantly. For a 50 year old boat there was surprisingly little rot. The top of the cap had lots of spider cracking which I assumed was from rotted coring, must have been from something else. I'm hoping to finish coring and flip the cap right side up this weekend and start dry fitting the cuddy.

Wow - Great workmanship and design.

Not the most exciting stage. Some update photos. I'll flip the cap and glass the underside this week.