Monday, December 4, 2017

Redux

After I realized that several things were going less-than-optimally, I decided (somewhat painfully) to start over again, from the design.
I widened the bow and stern entries on the design, so that I can actually strip to the forms. I also reduced the upturn of the ends, so I don't have to deal with such a "mad" curve.
I'm going to use an internal stem this time, because I don't like joining the ends of the strips past the bow & stern. It also prevents the mistake of gluing the form to the boat.
I'm probably not going to have enough strips, but I can deal with making more strips easier than I can deal with the number of mistakes that have piled up.
I went back into Kayak Foundry, and reshaped the bow & stern entries to be a little less "fine". I wondered if I could re-use the middle forms, then thought better of it, and remade all the forms. As I expected, forms 1 and 15 came out wider.
Planning an internal stem posed a problem-how to mark the taper? In the past, the plan had included a convenient line. This time, I used a strip long enough to span forms 1 and 2, or forms 14 and 15 to gauge the taper, making sure that it would run fair off the end of the stem. The taper I ended up with looked good, quite a bit like the taper of my Outer Islands.
A new way of dealing with the "cheater" strips occurred to me.
I glued in one full-length strip, with a little curve at the ends, and let it run straight out the end.
I then filled the gap with Cheater Strips. This was much easier than the way I used to do it-putting the cheaters down first, then the full-length strips on top. I wish I had thought of this years ago!

Saturday, December 2, 2017

Stripping

The Usual Stuff, except that I'm discovering that things that look "cool" on Kayak Foundry aren't quite as "cool" on the strongback.  I now wish I hadn't made the bow entry so sharp. 
It occurred to me that I don't necessarily have to strip  slavishly to the forms on my own design, but I have to strip symmetrically and workably.
I how also wish that I had made the bow & stern forms with an internal stem, like the Outer Island. I forgot what a pain it is to join the ends of the strips. I'm not following those forms exactly.
In fact, I'm accumulating so many should-haves that I'm considering starting all over, from the design.