> I'm a novice builder building a Guillemot kayak. I'm having trouble
> finding 1 inch fiberglass tape, is it all right to cut two inch tape in
> half. Also what is a good width of cloth to buy. Thanks alot.

Cutting 1 inch strips from two inch tape is certainly possible. but if you are going to take that route, why bother with buying tape in the first place? You can cut strips of any width from the same cloth you use elsewhere. By cutting your own, you can save some money, and if you like, you can produce ``bias cut'' strips which are a bit easier to use in areas with great curvature, like the bow and stern.

Cutting strips from scrap will mean you spend nothing for the strips, but they will be short, so you'll have a few joints to carefully sand level. This is not a major problem, just something to remember.

Most people who use their scraps as a source of strips have scraps from a first boat that they can use when they build the second boat. If this is a first boat, you don't have those handy scraps kicking around, so if you plan to cut your strips from scrap you are going to have to work backwards, and decide how much of your fiberglass fabric is ``scrap'' before you even start to apply it. This can be simple. or a real pain, but it works into your second question about width of glass cloth to buy, so let me bounce to that and get back to the strips.

Common widths for glass cloth are 38, 45, 60 and 72 inches. There are other sizes on the market, too. For the most economical purchase you usually want to buy the narrowest width that will work. There are several exceptions. One big one is that some suppliers seem to have a lot of cloth in a given width, let's say 60 inch, and they sell it for about the same price as narrower material. In this case, get the wider material, and cut some strips from it. If, for example, you buy 12 yards you can cut strips that are 12 yards long, which should be longer than you need.

Use a tape measure to measure the circumference of the form that is the biggest one in your boat. Usually this is near the middle. You want to get 6 main measurements from this. One is the total circumference ( all the way around the boat at it's widest spot. The second is just the hull, from sheer to sheer, again at the widest spot. The third is just the deck -- again, from sheer to sheer, at the widest spot. The fourth through sixth measurements repeat the process at the narrowest part of the boat (bow or stern). If you want, you can measure BOTH bow and stern.

Lets say the width of your kayak is 25 inches (a typical size) If your boat had a cross section that was a perfect circle I could multiply that by pi, and know that the circumference was around 79 inches. But, that is not the case. Your hull is more oval, and the deck might be peaked, or nearly flat. With a stitch and glue boat, the sides of the hull could be nearly straight lines. While I am going to make some educated guesses, for the sake of discussion, *YOU* should MEASURE.

If the total circumference is under 60 inches, work carefully and you can get away with using 60 inch material. You would probably be talking about a boat with a hull of 34 inches and a deck of 26 inches. For a boat covered in a single layer of glass on the interior and the exterior, you would buy a minimum of twice the length of the boat, plus 1 yard. For an 18 foot boat, get 36 feet (12 yards) plus 1 yard for a total of 13 yards.

If the hull is 34 and the deck is 26, you might think that you could simply cut the fabric in a straight line, 34 inches from one edge, and get two pieces: a long wide one that will cover the inside and outside of the hull, and a long narrow one that will cover the deck (inside and out). Well, this should work fines, except you'll need to be extremely precise in putting on this material, as you won't have any excess to spare. There is another way to cut this, though, which can give you a better use of the material, albeit with some difficulty.

To understand this, draw a diagram of how you will cut this material. Tape together a couple sheets from a newspaper and draw out the material on a scale of 1 inch equals 1 foot (1:12) or, if you are working in metric, do 10 cm equals 1 m (1:10)

Assuming you now have a 5 inch by 39 inch strip of paper, fold it in half to get a center line, which should be 2.5 inches in from each edge. Starting at one end, lay out the measurements for the hull, centering them on that centerline. Starting from the other end, layout the measurements for the deck. You'll have two shapes that look roughly like footballs, drawn down the center of your paper, with some space between them at the center. You would use these solid pieces for the exterior (finished) areas of your boat, where you want the appearance to be best. Since these are the first parts covered when you have the boat on the molds, you can lay your glass fabric right on the hull or deck and trim off the excess with a scissors before you apply the resin. You work from one end of the roll of gall for the hull, and then from the other end for the deck. Now, for glassing the inside fo the boat, lets go back to the drawing. Look at the space in the middle of the drawing. There is that big area of unused material. If you work from the center, to the edges at this point you can draw in 1/2 of the hull on the right and another half on the left. There will be plenty of extra material so that you can lap these pieces in the center of the inside of the hull. Look at waht is left of your drawing, and you will see that each corner has enough material to do 1/4 of the inside of the deck (where no one will ever see any laps or seams.) Because of the way these pieces nest together, you'll find ample amounts of material you can cut on a bias for joining strips.

Using a cutting pattern like this, with careful layout you might find that you could even use 60 inch material for boats that have circumferences that are much greater than 60 inches. To accomodate the wider boats you might have to buy another yard of material (in length) This allows your two solid pieces to be further apart, and gives you more wide material at the center, which is where you'll need it.

Simpler solutions abound. If your hull (from sheer to sheer) is near 34 inches, genreally you would go for 38 inch material, get 4 times the length of the boat, plus a spare yard or two. Half your material will go for the hull and the other half for the deck. If your deck is narrower (say 30 inches) you can easily cut 4 inches off the width to make strips from, and still have wide enough pieces to cover the deck without seams. You will have lots of material left from the corners. Again, use your measurements to lay out a scale drawing to see where and how you will cut the material, and you will see the result clearly. Some people put an extra layer of fabric on the bottom of the hull to provide greater resistance to dings and scratches. The leftovers from this type of cutting are ideal for that purpose. If you r hull is a bit over 38, you can also use the excess to patch in those widest spots, and get away with using this narrower material.

You might be tempted to go with 72 inch wide material, but most of the time it seems that a yard of that is more than twice the price of a yard of 38 inch material. If your supplier has it cheaper, then that is the way to go. You can slit it to two 36 inch widths, or get one piece 38, and the other 34, or any other combinations.

Some dealers give discounts on purchases of 10 or 25 yards of fabric. If you use narrower material for a 6 yard (18 foot) boat you can easily need 24 yards just to barely cover the length, so you would then buy 25 or 26 yards both to have some spare material, and to get the discounts. If you go with the idea of using multiple layers of light weight (2 ounce or 3 ounce) material, then you get into some really long lengths -- and potential discounts -- very quickly as you`ll buy double or triple the length you would use for a single layer.

Before you order your material, check prices carefully. Best I have seen recently have been in the catalog from Defender which you can order from their website (www.defenderus.com) Unfortunately they don't list their fiberglass prices on their website.

Other suppliers may have better deals. For example: The first fiberglass cloth and epoxy resin I bought came as a kit that was designed to be sold for finishing a particular model of woodstrip canoe. I called the company (Clarkcraft) and confirmed that this kit had the length of glass and the volume of resin I needed for my boat. It was at least $25 cheaper to buy the kit than to buy the same materials from their open stock, and the kit had a bit more glass cloth than I would have bought, too. Ask if you can get a better deal if you buy both resin and cloth at the same time. Also ask about breakpoints on quantity purchases. for example, if you need 3 quarts of paint it is usually cheaper to buy a gallon can than to buy 3 one-quart cans. You are not only paying less per quart, you are paying less over all.

Hope this helps

Paul Jacobson