Not sure how many times the epoxy can be heated enough to soften it enough to reassemble. If you're going to put off reassembly at least use a putty knife to remove as much of the old epoxy as possible. Those puzzle joints are pretty tight and it will probably be harder to reassemble at a later date. Good luck, post your results. 

   Well, not sure I even needed to panic, and do the hot water bag to separate the joints immediately last weekend upon discovery, but glad I did.

This morning, 7 days later, finally got back to "clean up" of all my excess epoxy.  In the interim, I had bought a heat gun - wise investment!  I heated the excess epoxy areas just a bit, the epoxy became brittle and soft.  I used a scraper, and angled heavier duty one and the excess scraped off clean.  I used some small bladed tools to peel the excess from the joints themselves - after reheating a bit.  It more or less peeled off.

I almost fit cleanly back together now - just some fine filing / sanding.  I'll probably re-glue it tomorrow night if I get time.  For now, letting the dried board aquire some ambient moisture sinc eth eheat gun surely sappped all the moisture out of the wood.  I could see if you went just too long, one could burn the wood .........which I managed to avoid.  bought a heat gun with two temp settings .... probably also a good choice.

Confident I have salvaged the joint very well.  Will report back when I se a successful glued and cure joint on my table.

  Salvaged deck joint and glued it back properly, other than allowing the plastic to catch in the threqads of the screw as I compressed, and wrinkled my fiberglass reinforcent.  Going to go with it ( it's underneath side of course).  Spent two weeks too busy to work on boat deciding if I should sand and reglass, but going to move forward.  My early joints I probably had a less filled than desired epoxy mix - bit runny, but I think the joints are solid and plan to bevel some edges and start stitching this weekend or next.  Anyone care to comment on puzzle joints glued with a not so thick epoxy mix, or my fibreglass tape wrinkles?

UTB,

You are fine, just keep going. The joints will be fine. Later in the process you will glass over the outside, and in some cases the inside too. The glass, wood glass forms a super strong sandwich. 

You have discovered that epxoy coated surfaces become slippery untill dried. Try to factor that into your clamping/stabalization schemes as you go along.

Keep having fun!

Joel

   Thanks for the encouragement Joel! 

I had a problem with slipping joints too (fortunately, they weren't misaligned enough to require a "redo"). The sad thing is that this problem seems most likely during the very first stages of contruction when one has the least experience with epoxy.

Somewhere in the forum I read a recommendation that I wish I had followed: when piecing layered joints (as in bulkheads) it can be helpful to align the parts and then pre-drill a tiny nail hole or two that can  be used to keep them in alignment. One can then slather the pieces with epoxy, insert the nails for alignment, and then clamp everything with some confidence that the parts will not slip later.

That seems like it would work. 

Birch2,

That is a good idea - I used a version of that on my cockpit rims. I knew that trying to glue the two layers of spacers (both layers in halfs) and the rim to the boat at once was going to be a slippery layer cake. So I assembled the hole mess dry with clamps. Once it was aligned correctly, I drilled 1/4" holes in eight places in a nice design. Then the rim was assembled with expoxy and 1/4" dowels in the alignment holes - it glued up like a charm because the clamps where just supplying vertical pressure, the dowels kept all the piaces aligned. Now the dowels are "decoration" on my cockpit rim.  

You could do your bulkhead idea with 1/8" dowels and trim them flush as a design feature!

Joel