Day 6 - Finishing the decking laminate and gluing it in place

Today was pretty much dedicated to finishing off the deck laminate. In the photo below, you can see how all the pieces toward the bow are in place and pinned down, with the exception of the bow plate and the filler corner pieces around the companionway:

The front of the laminate strips have been trimmed to match up with the bow plate:

Here you can see how the edge pieces just hang over the edges of the bow and have mostly been trimmed with a pair of sharp scissors:

Another shot of the companionway opening:

I did not attempt to trim the pieces too closely to the deck edge, just to leave myself a little flexibility:

My approach to applying the deck laminate is a bit off from the instructions. Now that the pieces are placed, I am taping over the entire top surface to essentially turn the whole surface into one piece I can glue in place all at once. I started with strips of tape in between rows of pins. Small pieces connect small parts. Once this step was done, I covered the entire surface with tape, removing pins as necessary:

At the end, the pins were all removed except for the ones that I had previously fully inserted into deck holes, and tape covered the surface. Then, the whole assembly comes off and is nicely and securely affixed to the tape. This also permitted me to very easily see the spacing between strips and double check all alignment:

I trimmed off all excess tape:

Here are a couple more shots of the now empty deck and the laminate setup:

I marked off any areas I did not want to apply epoxy to:

Ditto on the transom where the transom veneer plate will come around to the top of the deck:

Another technique that I decided to try (and have not seen others do, though I imagine someone must have tried this) is to fill in the space between each veneer strip with a tinted wood filler. The idea is to simulate the joint filler of a real deck. By filling this in from the bottom side, while the tape is covering the topside, the gaps are filled and prevent the epoxy from the next step from filling in any of the gaps, which would effectively screw up the filler if applied from the top. I do intend to have to refill some areas once the tape comes off. I just used my finger to smear the wood filler in:

Then I used the very handy palette knife to scrape off any excess:

Here is the finished bottom side. The pins are the centering pins I had inserted through the veneer and into any deck holes:

Here is a shot of the bow area:

And another several views:

After the above pictures were taken, I sanded down the bottom surface with 100 grit sandpaper just to clean off any excess wood filler left on the veneer. 

Then I applied the epoxy to the deck surface as instructed, applied the whole deck laminate assembly, positioned the bow plate and a couple of little filler pieces for the tip of the bow which in my case will sit under the rails I will apply later:

I then tapes the bow pieces in place:

I used a laminate roller to assure good contact between the deck and the veneer:

As usual, Stephen King provided some weight to my story:

I put something under the bow and stern to provide support:

That's all for today!