Thread: stitch and glue kayak

sticth and glue
why not try plastic electrical cable bulk at Super cheap auto shop than copper wire break in sticth and glue joined.
Bamccallau

basically the "wire" can be those plastic ties what you do is you cut your plank shape usually from 1/4in ply and measure in 1/4in from the two mateing peices mark every 6in or so and drill a small hole just large enough for the tie to be sent through... then when all done line the two peices together and send through the ties snugging up when all the mating peices are together... then you simply run a fillet of goop ala epozy along the mated joins when near dry snip the ties away and whalla! no marks no screws no mess easy as... in theory that is in reality you definantly have mess if nothing else epozy is crap to work with and unless your anul with the ties you will end up with bits of tie all over the floor

With canoes... The best book for plans is "Building the feather canoe" by Mac McCarthy a older yank fella who has put to gether the book with pics and interesting stoiries to compliment then at the back has put in the shapes and sizes ala offsets for both his 12ft and 14ft Wee Lassie canoes... he admits by email to having purposely put in several small errors just to see if your on the ball I did the measureing marking and cutting of both sets of moulds in the living room of our last house found 3 errors straight away line up the losting batten si its all nice and fair and continue

Another thing I learnt on my first foray into canoe building was NOT to use Aussie hardwoods!! This was a complete and utter failure... however not all was lost I did learn several things that will carry further as I begin building my next boats

The first is when planking a strip planked canoe when holding the strips to the mould use... fishing line! yep good ol fishing line... first strip use a screw in each mould (this is needed to hold it and the rest to shape (and shouldnt be discarded) for each strip thereafter use the fishing line to hold it down to the previous strip...

Most builders recommend and even old Mac suggests using mega numbers of clamps to hold the strips to the moulds... I found that Id be forever waiting for the glue to dry before I could move on 2 maybe 3 strips per side clamp wait.. with the fishing line I could do the whole boat in one go!... or as long as the fishing line lasted... what Im talking about here is the strips being cove and beaded laying the cove side facing up to meet the next strip (you will of course be building this canoe upside down right!) this gives a base for the glue to sit you pour a wee bit along the cove smear it with your index finger then drop the next strip down to meet it grab the fishing line start at one end and rotate the fishing line around the strip in an under and over motion going under the first strp and over the new strip all the way along pulling tight as you go... how does it hold? Well you made an inner stem to which you lay your strips against didnt you? Well simply place a screw just below the sheer line at each stem tie the fishing line to one work it along and tie off at the other do the other side fishing line it back to the other end temporarily tie off on the screw again do the other side fishing line to other end temporarily tie of at scerw again and so on...

The beauty here is you dont need to cut ties take out staples wait eons just keep going and it really doesnt matter if you do the whole hull since all you will have is a tiny minute hole that the fishin line passed through and these will be filled with the epozy and fibreglass in your next step

Brilliant eh!

ooops back to kayaks... dont know a flamin thing about them! except theyre long skinny and go faster than I want to! I go paddling to relax take pics and fish

Good luck and cheers!!

Man, that fishingline idea is brilliant! Gonna use that if I ever get around to building kayak #3 (cedar strip). Too busy building guitars these days tho, and they are a lot easier to carry around.

Andrew, I've built two stitch & glue kayaks. The first was a guillemot S&G from a table of offsets I found on the web, the second was the west river 180 from the offsets in the new kayak shop. If your not sure about plotting the lines of the boat by hand from the offsets in the book, then buy the plans. But it's not to hard to plot from offsets, once you work it out.

I used International Epiglass epoxy that I bought from whitworth marine, the epoxy is great stuff, but whitworths know how to charge!

Also, if you haven't already found it, check out the kayak building forum at http://www.kayakforum.com/. There are heaps of blokes there that have built the same kayak from either book or plans, they'll have a ton of advice for you.

Gidday Paul
Ive heard good things about BoatCoate epoxy never used it but Ive heard good things