Jeannecke

Kit delivered October 9th 2026. Converted shop from metal airplane building to wooden boat building. Some early lessons were you need 1" and 2" chip brushes and a lot of epoxy cups. Looking at the building tips on CLC's website was invaluable also. The epoxy mixing stick using a dowel and 1" screws made for a great and economical mixer with a 3/8 drill. Card scrapers are also essential in my mind. A bastard file and burnishing tool was also necessary. I got a heavy waxed canvas apron and both finger and fingerless gloves for working with wire. I also found that .041" stainless steel aviation wire was absolutely essential to fit the transom - the design from an assembly standpoint is a nightmare and I couldn't have done it with the thin copper wire in the kit. Other items I got were 2 different sanding blocks, Shinto rasp, 2 Japanese draw saws (small and large) a good quality Veritas block plane and Veritas sharpening guide, a semi-flexible board sander, pastry bags from Amazon - do NOT use the "freezer bag trick" if you're new at this, the flow is uncontrollable and you will waste a lot more epoxy. I read almost all of the building tips and joined the builders forum on CLC as well. Early posting lead to some excellent advice from experienced builders.

I was able to build the bulkheads, transom, skeg, and all panels without help. Once I started to assemble, I needed help with the port and starboard panels so my wife held them while did the stitching. We did a panel a day so it wasn't too much of a time commitment all at once for her.

With the help of 4 people and being mindful of the stitches, we flipped the boat and I did final tightening of the stitches. I broke maybe half a dozen of them but no big deal putting new ones in. Using a lineman's pliers made it very easy to tighten them. I also installed a heavy-duty overhead boat lift and added 6 more shop lights. Then it was on to the epoxy tacks.
Tacks were challenging because I didn't have actual pastry bags yet, so it was harder to control the flow. Some were overfilled and some under. Underfilled is easy to fix since you can just add epoxy but cured overfill means learning to use the card scraper and getting riffler files which really helped later on. Once the tacks cured I was able to flip the boat by myself using just the boat lift.