Hull Work

Again, I decided to do some of the fairing work on the hull before turning the boat over. It just seems to go better with the boat still on all the forms. 

Of course, I worried about the fairness of the stems and keel line, but I always do. The shape of this kayak is much different that any I've built before. It looks "fat" in the area between midpoint and stern, and the chine is harder. 
Here, I have wet the stern area down  for scraping & sanding. I always forget just how much sanding is required to get the strips looking good.  

Stems

When I laid the center strip. I had some kind of intuition that I should overlap it on the internal stem. It seems to have worked out well, although you can see the joint if you look closely.

The stem layups that I made earlier din't even come close to fitting, so I fell back on the "old" technique. I planed basswood down to 1/8" x 3/4", and set the first strips with dookie.

Layers 2,3, and 4 were glued with Titebond. A little heat bending was needed at the ends, which was easy with these this strips. I'm always amazed at the amount of clamping pressure that can be achieved with several laps of shrink wrap.

The four layers looked huge.

I ground the basswood down to the angle of the hull, and was surprised at how much smaller the stem became-about 2 layers ended up sawdust! The stem seems to be blending into  the center strip fairly well.

Stern. More fairing to be done, especially that whoop-dee-doo curve in the middle.
Generally, this is going quite well, and I think its going to look nice.

More Stripping

The instruction manual advocates some type of stripping technique I'm unfamiliar with, sort of how Vaclav cuts in inlays, but I decided to go at it by bending strips with the heat gun.

There was a considerable twist necessary at the stern-the stern stem is narrow and skeg-like.

A spot where I had to improvise a little. I had trouble getting the strips to reach the internal stem, so I beveled & glued them to each other. when I started shaping the ends. they were too far apart to be covered by a 3/4" strip, so I pulled them together and glued in a piece of strip.

Another improvisation. I glued a center strip on top of the first, so I'd have a place to glue subsequent strips. I hope that the picture is more descriptive than my words!

I figured out a new way to get the center strip aligned straight. I had noticed in previous build that it always looked straight after the first two strips were glued to it, so this time, instead of struggling to get the center strip straight by itself, I cut and planed the two bottom strips before nailing the center strips in. I placed the strips in (dry),checked the center strip for alignment then tacked in the center strip. Looks very straight!