bwhip

I was going to drill thru holes right beneath the coaming lip and use a stainless rectangular tee nut, tucked up tight under the lip. I didn't like the shiny bling that would have made on the outside of my mahogany coaming, so I just used stainless sheet metal screws. It works fine. Here's the back rest mounted on my boat. The pad is 4 inches in front of the frame and the screws aren't too far forward, so the straps don't pinch in on the paddler's sides. Also, the plastic strap ends don't dig into the paddler's elbows.

Finally initiated the boat on 7/30 in the Willapa River at Raymond, WA. We spent about 3 hours exploring the tidal sloughs. My wife likes the boat, but I don't think she's heavy enough for it. Her old stitch-and-glue kayak has quite a bit less volume than this. I suggested she wear about 40 pounds of scuba weight. Yes, I was joking. I painted it with Rustoleum--gloss black, sunburst yellow and sail blue. She came up with the name "Froggone It." I used the cobalt poison dart frog as a model.

Finally! I don't know what happened, but up here in the Pacific NW, I've been unable to reach the forum for over a month using Centurylink. Thanks to whoever ran the tech support gauntlet to get it fixed!

I just used an old wood burning iron with a shading tip to cut my fabric (11 oz poly). It went through the fabric just fine, and fused the edges, but it took a little longer I imagine. If you're just making one or two boats, you don't need to go whole hog on an expensive hot knife.

The Oasis is a sit-on-top, so there isn't an issue with water coming up through the drive trunk. Since the drive is mounted low to the keel, you'd risk swamping an SOF boat with this setup. If you make the trunk higher, the drive fins won't lay against the hull like they're supposed to, and you'd have no knee room (in a kayak at least). BTW--the Hobie Oasis is made from polyethylene, which can be repaired with P-Tex candles.

I did the same thing with my Pygmy kayak. I laser-printed the name and hull number on tissue paper then epoxied them onto the boat, before fiberglassing. They wetted out nicely and became see through. You could try it out with some scrap fabric and your choice of finish to see if will work in an SOF application.

Use polyester skin then paint the deck with the flag pattern. You can modify the pattern to better flow with the shape of the boat. I bet it would look cool.

I used sinew because I got tired of snapping the thread all the time. My biggest issue was transferring wax from the sinew to the fabric.

UHMW-PE will creep as long as it's under tension (as in a kayak skin). In other words, it will stop creeping when it goes loose. It's also a thermoforming plastic, so paint it a dark color and set it in the sun, and the creep will increase. When it cools, it will retain its new shape.

That is crazy beautiful. Wow.

I think that would tighten up pretty well when you lash it. Hopefully, a more experienced builder than I will chime in.

I cut the keel stringer a little short on my boat and just glued some wood shim to the end of the stringer to fill up the gap. After the glue cured, I sanded the shim to match the stringer. It's not quite the same as what you're talking about, but similar. How much bigger is the cut?

Here's last year's crop of neighborhood apple snipers. My wife snapped these while driving near our house. Momma bear was in the bushes. The sow moves on as soon as she cleans out the reachable apples.

I found a giant mole-mountain-sized pile of bear scat in my backyard two weeks ago. It was mostly partially chewed apples with a little binder material mixed in. It made a very heavy shovel full. A sow and her 2 cubs are hanging out across the street at my neighbor's apple tree and she used my back yard as a privy. My Pygmy Pinguino was just a few feet away, but it's hung up under the eave of my horse barn and escaped unmolested by the bear. Here's one of the better comments from the kayak/bear video.

Bear, please eat the woman! Bear! Please eat the woman!

Been there, done that, buried the witness.

Nice boat. Congrats.

Don't forget the flying tiger!

The P-40 Warhawk of kayaks!

Back in '78 I had a kayak date with a cute little girl in a Folbot Greenland 2 tandem barge. During the float, I clubbed her in the back of the head with the paddle, and I swear to this day that it wasn't intentional. Well, she ended up marrying me and today (really) we're celebrating our 34th anniversary. In our case, the tandem ended up being a marriage boat. We kayak solo now, just in case.

Pretty boat and beautiful area. It's not too dissimilar from the water I paddle here on the Pacific coast, except you don't have to worry about the tides. I might paddle over that log on the way in, then go under it on the way out!

Thanks for the great info gentlemen. All my fabric is trimmed and I'm ready to start stitching. I'll post back with the results . . . after I replace my camera.

Thanks Robert. I think you're right about psyching myself out. I feel kind of like Calvin when he was learning to ride his kid-eating bicycle. I'm wondering about whether I'm going to end up seamless where the red arrows are. The skin is going to have to move a whole lot in order for this to happen on mine. From what you say, it should gradually stretch into place. Time to dive in I guess.

I'm skinning a Ravenswood with 11.6 oz. polyester, using the double corded stitch method. I'm planning on sewing from the cockpit toward the the bow and stern, just like Jeff described in his Youtube video. I guess my main question is, will the fabric follow the upswept underside of the bow and stern as I progress to the ends of the boat? Jeff mentioned that it would, in this video (https://youtu.be/g9vYF2LWg9M?t=124) but that's with 8 oz. fabric. I sewed a zig-zag basting stitch to pre-tension the skin (per Brian Schulz's youtube video https://youtu.be/VznUjj7fcs4?t=1712) and tightened it up pretty good, but the fabric didn't snug up on the ends. I haven't started sewing the corded seam because of this. Should I just jump in and start sewing? Any advice from you professionals is appreciated. I would include photos, but I went swimming with my camera, which didn't take kindly to the salt water. thanks, Rich

What the heck. Posted this in the wrong forum. Jeff, can you move this to the main forum?