Leaderboard

It turns out you can't build a 17' boat in a 16' workshop. What was I thinking? So I had to build a new workshop and this has taken a few months. The new building is now done, 24'x24' pole barn, concrete slab and galvalume siding/roof. We have been moving tools in to the new shop this week. Plywood has been ordered and will arrive next week. Can't wait to get started. My son (16) plays classical guitar and he started working on a new piece on the same day that I received the CS 17 plans in the mail - thus inspiring the original post.

And there you have it

I stapled the skin (Jeff's original polyester) on my first - and only - build. I stretched the hull skin as tight as I could, working from the center toward each end, alternating ends and sides, wrapping the skin around the gunwale and stapling on the inside about every three inches. After the initial stapling I went back, rolled the excess into a sorta' neat roll and stapled every inch. The deck was also stretched as tight as possible and stapled on the outside using the same system. There were very few, very small wrinkles left to iron and they have not re-appeared with use. I've not tried sewing a boat so I can't compare sewing to stapling, but I can strongly endorse stapling. The process used over a thousand stainless staples and took a couple of hours. My electric stapler didn't always seat the staples fully, but a hammer fixed that problem. I covered the ugly line of rolled and stapled deck fabric with a polyester webbing. The webbing looks good (to me) and protects the gunwale from scrapes against docks and storage racks. My hands were a bit sore from pulling the fabric tight, so there's not much advantage in effort, based on comments I've read about sewing. Stapling certainly falls into the experimental category, but my single data point indicates it's worth considering.