Gluing BH 4 and some things I found out about gluing

Alright, I'm a little frustrated at myself right now, because things are coming along nice, but not coming along like I want them too. Everything will be OK in the end, but it won't be as nice and neat as I would like to see, and that's aggravating. A lot of the mess stems from excess epoxy squeezing out and making the seams look all lumpy and dumb. A faster clean-up job before anything even begins to think about setting up would have saved me from having stupid looking frames.

First, I've been having some problems at work that are pretty significant, and I wasn't as focused on gluing as I wanted to be or could have and that led to sloppy gluing work.

Second, I just don't have wood gluing experience. My epoxy/fiberglass experience is solely focused on my Laser, hull #194, from the early 70's. This boat has hit submerged objects, sandbars, docks, buoys, other boats, etc. at speed. Laser speed. Fast. Rig humming with 2/3 of the boat out of the water fast. Once, it fell off my car... while I was driving. Needless to say, I'd just slop some epoxy on and keep going. Now that I'm gluing together my wood boat, I can't be as messy, or at least, I'd rather I wasn't as messy.

BH1 is messy but will be hidden mostly from view. BH2 is somewhat in view and the frames are going to visible, and it's kind of messy. BH 3 could have come out perfect, but it looks messy too because I rushed and didn't STOP.THINKFIRST.NOTSOFAST. BH 4 came out really nice and clean, but the frame is mostly hidden within the rear airtight box, so no one will see my clean job! Dammit! Roar!

So here's a tip to you beginners out there: First, read all you can about epoxy. I have yet to find a nice primer/tutorial on wood gluing for boats, and that would have helped. The Storer forum, my thread in particular could help you out. Second, my biggest mistake in neatness is that I waited for the epoxy to firm up to a putty and then tried to hack off the excess. This is a mistake. This evening I glued BH4 together, let it sit for a few minutes to excess epoxy oozed out, and just cleaned it right up. Presto besto pesto yum done. A nice neat job. Why I didn't think about this 3 BH's ago, I know not.