Hi HerbieRidesAgain,

sounds like a story there....ahem.

yes, there are several ways i have addressed divots....my life is full of stories too - ahem.

if there are few divots, larger, deeper, you can fill with a pieces of scrap wood glued into the divot.  this is particularly useful if you are trying to preserve the look of wood.   very labor intensive, but you can, with effort, make a divot disappear well enough to allow for a bright finish. (getting startled while holding a big power sander running 60 grit in high RPM mode against a strip build... story)

if there are divots that are going to be pretty much in compression and not highly loaded,  and will need sanding to fare them in,   and can be painted, definitely go with a very pasty microballoon recipe.  (what'ya mean there is not a sawhorse under the bow? do you think this boat can defy gravity? but you told me to drop it.... story) 

if the divot is in a place with a lot of load on it, woodflour with some cabosil is my preferred mix.  (how much did they say we could bend this stick? ....story)

based on my read of your situation, ahem, i would go with the microballoons.....very thick to make it easy to sand.

h

H, Thank you. It's not that I'm afraid to share the details. More like unwilling to write a sob story long enough for the New Yorker. The short story is that the board was level all along its length but that the bow was perched on a makeshift support on a sawhorse that was not quite level (not sure how I managed to be so negligent). If I'd realized how malleable the hull would be after 10 days of curing at 60 F, I would have been a lot more careful. I guess "funny" things (like a twist of more than *an inch* side to side at the bow) can happen when one puts 300 lbs on top of something without careful consideration of the entire structure! Given that I've planned to leave only the deck bright all along (with paint wrapping around the roundover and 1-2" onto the deck), I'll go with cell-o-fill thickened epoxy on the sheer clamps for strength and a microballoon-heavy epoxy mix on the plywood side panels to facilitate fairing. A perfectly harmless catastrophe as far as the end product is concerned, I suppose. Apologies for the lack of paragraphs - I add breaks, but they never make it to the forum when I post from my phone.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the hull bounce back to its almost-level state after pulling the deck off (one day later) not only because it meant I wouldn't have to trash it or endure teasing about the cartoonishly twisted hull but also because it suggested that I can probably fix the gentle twist I haven't been able to work out of the stern with some asymmetrical loading of deck #2 at the tail block during curing.

I got a chuckle out of your stories, by the way.  Anyone who has built as many boats as you have (I think I saw you claim 20+ the other day?!) has surely seen some stuff.  :-)  Thanks again.