Epoxy Fillet an Oz Goose Sailboat - Advantages - Storer Boat Plans in Wood and Plywood

We cover the reasons for choosing either timber cleat construction or epoxy fillet construction to build the Light, simply structured and easy to build OZ Goose Sailing Dinghy.

Answers are different in different parts of the world.

Oz Goose planing in moderate wind - Keep it flat ... hike .. sail out if necessary

Why Filleted Construction for Plywood sailing dinghies?

Michael McGlynn is building his goose in Kansas. He sent the first photos of a filleted hull. More below. And Facebook link if you want to follow up progress.

Epoxy Fillets instead of Timber can save time and in countries where timber is expensive it can save considerable cost in building an Oz Goose Sailing Dinghy.

The plans do contain both options.

Timber Framing Construction
Epoxy Fillet Construction

Read the plans carefully as there is one area that needs to be setup to be a bit stronger.

Where timber is cheap and locally available (North America) it makes sense to use timber. It does require a fair bit of framing up. But the easy labour keeps the cost down. Most framing is square except at the ends of the boat. (More on Filleting Method including the plastic bag method)

Neat fast epoxy filleting in boatbuilding using bags

Framing to hold the hull together is mostly eliminated by using epoxy fillets. By looking at this stack of 10 boats for one of our group builds you can see that there is quite a bit of framing involved.

10 sets of Oz Goose sailing dinghy plywood panels with framing in group build

Building Oz Goose Sailboats as a group build - fillet or timber framing?

Timber not eliminated is to attach the deck and functional bits like the mast step and partner to support the mast and around the centrecase.

The important principle is that these timber pieces get the loads from the mast and the centreboard into the plywood. So, the joins below are awaiting for the deck to distribute the loads over wide areas.

Filleting can help keep the cost down where timber or transport is expensive (Australia or Europe).

Stitch and glue plywood boat construction can be simplified for some shapes

The idea of the Goose was partially to put the boat together with minimal cable ties (there is not a lot of stress in curving the ply). Use Duct tape or gaffer tape to hold the chines together while the fillets are done. (Do tests with different brands of tape before trusting it). This means the interior of the boat ends up very clean. There are few cable ties to work around with the epoxy filleting.

This is not possible with many designs with much twist in the panels which adds considerable loads to the joins. The Oz Goose and the Quick Canoe are designed around relaxed panel configurations.

Rick landreville ozracer assembly using duct tape

This leaves an exceptionally clean interior for fast filleting as we can see from Michael McGlynn’s build in Kansas. And his fillets are excptionally nice fillets.

Mine are more workmanlike. I’d do the ones in the tank fast and the ones you can see as neat as Michael’s (hopefully).