Kirsten, I have a son in boy scouts (10 years old) and he and I built a Jam8. Sketchy plans as well as the address of the designer for full sized plans appeared in a previous issue of Boatbuilder. Based on our experience, there is a great deal that 10 to 13 year olds can do on this type of project. He participated in; transferring the offsets to ply, cutting, drilling, stitching with cable ties, painting, clipping cable ties, sanding, cutting fiberglass cloth, painting. His participation in the epoxy work was much more limited. My vocation is health and safety, so I gave a great deal of thought to the potential for him to be injured or made ill. I have a few recommendations along those lines. 1. Fully explain the potential hazards and establish clearly understood rules about what tasks can be done by whom using what gear. Things like absolutely no horseplay in the workshop, always wearing safety glasses when cutting cable ties, sanding, or cutting with power tools, wearing earplugs when running noisy equipment. 2. Lock up or disable any dangerous tools you will not allow them to use (because there will always be at least one smart-ass who won't obey above). 3. Use battery powered drill or a drill insert that goes into a battery powered screwdriver as most of these are weak and slow and less likely to injure. 4. Allow kids to use fine-toothed hand saws or jig saws. It is difficult to do much damage to flesh with a fine-toothed hand saw or jig saw. Do not allow kids to use rotary saws or band saws. 5. Provide the kids with safety glasses or goggles when they do anything with any potential to fling sawdust or other material into the eyes. 6. I allowed only minimal participation with the application of epoxy because the catalyst contains materials that can cause allergies. A person who becomes sensitized to these materials will essentially be unable to use or be around these chemicals for the rest of his/her life. There is a great deal of variation between individuals regarding the probability of developing an allergy to these materials. If you allow kids to work with epoxy, I would strongly suggest that you or another adult do the pouring and mixing (the sensitizing material is probably less likely to vaporize once the resin and catalyst are mixed), provide excessively adequate ventilation (outdoors and fans), and require gloves. You could also check with several manufacturers as some claim that their product is less likely to cause sensitization. 7. Inform the parents in writing with full details about the activity and get written permission from them. 8. Supervise them carefully.

I'm sure I forgot some important rules and you will probably think of more once you start. All that said, my son and I had a great time building the boat and have since built two canoes and plan to build another kayak this winter. We recently took the kayak to a boy scout camp out and allowed the scouts to use it in the nearby lake. Over the course of two full days, there was hardly a time when there wasn't a line of boys waiting to paddle it around.