Greetings from England.
Its a no-brainer, I really must build a SOF: my office is a few miles downstream, with a slipway.. I could paddle to work.
I'm going learn to paddle a touring kayak in the spring, (total beginner) and have easy access to a dagger chaleston 14 (and I have a friend that's a kayak instructor) then build a SOF, undecided if this should be a Vardo or Ravenswood. - any thoughts folks?. The stability of the Vardo is quite appealing to me, when coupled with the "you wont outgrow it" statement - (assuming this relates to my ability rather than my size, im not a large chap). I note the ravenswood SF is a little lower than the Vardo: are both ok for a novice? Im most likely to do day tripping rather than the "loaded up" touring that Vardo would, I think, be a good choice for.
So, rummaging in the forums, and doing research, I'm thinking about a polyester skin rather than nylon as although I found a uk source of ballistic nylon in a small range of colours, im not thrilled by the "saggy when wet" aspect of that material, I like the fact that polyester will take loads of paint types, and the sewing technique looked quite straigtforwards (good video by the way). I looked for polyester supplies in the uk: I found bewildering choice for material used for making clothes but im not really sure what sort of polyester fabric to be looking for, if its easy to get in the uk and form where?, is anyone able to point me in the right direction please ? (ought i just look for the correct weight of fabric, or is is there more to it than that?). Is it more commonly used in another application I can search for? Oh and what is diolen, i believe its a polyester based fabric? its used in composites but can it be used for SOF?
On a final musical note, on youtube there's a german guy building a SOF prospector canoe, there's blugrass playing in the background - i liked it. Im gonna need some fast banjo music to listen to when building my kayak. any reccomendations? There's just something about that sound that makes me smile, seems like the perfect music to build to.
Thanks Folks,