Hi David,

I'm currently (still) building Nick's S&G (anybody thinking of building this boat; you'll be happier with a stripper, believe me). I was looking to build a nice looking coaming on account of the fact that I'm gonna have to paint the whole boat, but I still want it to look like a wooden boat.

I didn't really like any of the popular methods for purly asthetic reasons. After much trial and error (and I gotta admit some pretty lame ideas). I finally built it out of 1" square lengths of mohogany.

I began by laying a short length of my 1" stock across the back of the cockpit after shaping the underside to mach the shape of the cockpit recess on a disk-sander, then I clamped it down with some clamps I made from PVC pipe, making sure that it overlapped the cockpit edge by at least 1/8". After that it was just a matter of working my way around the cockpit shaping pieces on a disk sander, butting the pieces together on the boat, and then glueing them together and clamping them down. I layed pieces of plastic bag under each glue joint, so that after it dried I was left with a fairly jagged looking wooden ring that I could take off the boat. I ran a pencil around the cockpit opening where the coaming overlapped edge and shaped the inside edge on a drum sander, scribed a line for the outside edge by following the inside edge with a marking gauge and the same for the top edge by folling the bottom edge, sanded down to these lines on the disk and drum sander. Now I had a nice smooth ring that was 7/8" high by about 3/4" wide around the edges. I cut a cove into the lower outside edge with a 1/4" gouging chisel (man, didn't that take some time!) and sanded it smooth with a bit of sandpaper stapled to a 2" length of broom handle. Then I put the whole thing on the boat, and glassed around the outside edge with some bias cut cloth.

I still had to round off the inside edge and I got all nervous about stuffing it up, so I stopped and got some pratice by building a greenland style paddle out of some recycled western red cedar. The paddle turned out brilliant, so I dived in and rounded out the coaming. Using 1" strips of sand paper I sanded until the inner and outer curves matched and the coaming was of uniform thickness all the way around.

It was pretty tricky to glass the flair of the coaming, I had to cut pieces of 6oz glass oversize, staple them to the under side of the deck, fold them over the coaming and tape them to the outside deck with packing tape.

As it stands, I've put on four coats of epoxy, and am ready to sand it smooth and put on some varnish. It is the same rounded shape as coamings I've seen on most fiberglass kayaks, and looks awesome.

It allready surpasses all expectations I had for this boat (and for while there I began to have some doubts). I guess it's the recovery that counts ;-)

Would I use this meathod again? Well the results are worth it, but it's probably too much work and not enough paddling.

Paul.