Next is jointing the plywood pieces: 8 joints for the hull, and just 1 for the deck, to form the bilges that would build up into the boat shape. For the 2 pairs of hull’s bilges, I flip one pair by 180 degree when drawing on the boards, so that to distribute the joints at different places across the boat length, and not to concentrate too much joints into one proximity. That old boatbuilding carpenter’s trick is not completely necessary with modern building techniques, but it’s nice to do so anyway.

The tried – and – true technique of straight finger joint is used as always. The straight joints are easy to cut, and most importantly much easier to be aligned following a straight line for all the jointing parts, so that to make sure all the bilges would be jointed into the correct shapes. All the joints are treated carefully, first is applying a layer of thinned epoxy (using xylene as a solvent, for the substance to penetrate deeply into the plywood), then gluing with epoxy, then a layer of glass on the internal side.

I beveled the edges of the deck parts a bit (at 45 degrees), so that they would fit tightly and nicely together forming straight seam lines. But that’s not applied to the hull, where the cursive seam lines don’t like very thin edges. Experiences from my previous boats showed that, it’s best just to use the squared edges, the thin edges doesn’t stay on each other very well, and would deform, distort the seam lines! You would later just apply thickened epoxy on both sides (in and out) of the seams!

The progress is really slow lately, several weeks passed, but little get done! Things started moving anyhow, I “quickly” transfer the “offset tables” onto the plywood boards, draw all the bilges, bulkheads, and other parts. The greatest thing of all is that now I’ve purchased very good sheets of plywood, not truly marine – grade (there’s no such in Vietnam), but high – grade water – resistance ones. I could feel it when do the sawing, the boards are quit tough, not fragile as with my previous ply!

There would be an immediate consequence with the new plywood, I would just use less epoxy to pre – fill the boards, and since the boards is stiffer, the glassing would be done on the outside only, that would significantly save the boat weight, I hope. All drawing is completed quickly, I finished in just less than one day, next come the steps of cutting and jointing the bilges. Everything has been done many times before already, so I didn’t have to think or consider things much, just repeat it!

4^th image: the cockpit coaming frame cut from a piece of 18 mm MDF. This cockpit is drawn using the mathematic formula mentioned in my last post. It came very closed to the shape of Serene – 2‘s cockpit, but slightly smaller on each sides by about 5 mm, so my existing spray skirt should fit tightly with this new coaming (on Serene – 2, it’s too tight). The coaming would be constructed from 2 layers of 4 mm plywood, and I would later omit out the (a bit tricky) glass reinforcement on this part!

Finally, I managed to have some time slots to start the kayak building. Works would be carried out mostly at weekends, and hopefully, the boat could be finished within this year. After much hesitations, procrastinations, and considerations into the very details, I’ve incorporated quite some “innovations” into the final design, as well as some “simplifications” to ease the building process. I “hope” this is also my “last” stitch – and – glue boat, the 6^th of “the fleet”, seems to be a lot already!

The past 2, 3 weeks were spent mostly on reviewing, fine – tuning the design, “rehearse” the overall building techniques and process. This is a design that consumes my brainstorm the most! Many building steps could be done very quick now, as they have been done 5, 6 times already. So I would skip documenting in various parts, as they are all similar as in my previous boats, only to highlight things that are different. First is setting up the molding stations, cut from MDF as usual.

There would be 9 molding stations (female type) for the hull, and only 4 stations for the deck, each positioned 0.6m apart. One of my last changes to the deck was modifying its sides’ “slope” to 45 degrees, the deck would have lots of “flare” in the inverted position, that’s to make rolling easier. Once the boat is up – side – down and the deck becomes the bottom, so a “stable” full – shape deck wouldn’t be good for practicing kayak rolling. And I guess it could give some help to the boat’s windage too.