> John:

> Just finshed doing this on a Chesapeake 16 and the previous notes about
> the sheer are right on. What we did to hold the deck down, was use 1 1/2 x
> 1 1/2 blocks of proper thickness plywood with a hole in the middle of
> them.

> First we "tied" the deck down by using the wood blocks with the
> proper length drywall screw to "hinge" the deck at the center/
> cockpit opening. From there we used the block/ drywall screw set up
> alternating sides and it worked very well. The reason for doing this was
> because I have seen kayaks with the nails and do not like them (as said
> before, they "flatten" out the area around them).

Hiya.

I'm getting ready to start the wife's boat (a Chessie 16) and am interested in this technique for holding down the deck. I'm having a hard visualizing this setup though. Is there anyway to get a sketch or something on this?

While building my Chessie 17, I followed the instructions on planing the clamps to the T, and ended up with the slight gap between the deck and clamp due to the curvature. On this boat, I will plane a lot less curve. After looking and the plans and instructions, I noticed that the drawing of the planed clamps did seem flatter than I had planed. Hope not to make the same mistake again.