I appreciate the input, both pro and con. I've built two Pygmy kayaks, and may very well be buying and building other kits from Pygmy, so even with the rant, I'm willing to continue to be a Pygmy customer. Or I may venture into other boat building projects, strip built, skin on frame, or perhaps something other than a kayak. I liked these kits as a way to get my feet wet with boat building, and to provide a reasonable compromise between time and cost. (a strip built or stitch and glue from plans only was outside the time constraint, while a new, complete fiberglass or wood kayak was outside the cost constraint). I enjoyed building the kayaks, and learned some new skills that I can apply with other projects moving forward.

I understand some of the limitations of a small business. I still don't think it is unreasonable to list a page or two of "construction alternatives". Much as I recall from many of the plastic models I built as a kid, or other pattern/kit projects I've tackled over the years. This could include pointers to other suppliers or sources of information for items that Pygmy is not interested in becoming a supplier. I'd much prefer a willingness to consider alternative approaches rather than what I feel is is do it my way or not at all. About the only outside source information they include is "the epoxy book", so Pygmy is at times willing to outsource some information.

I've found much of this alternative information on this BBS, on the Southern California Kayak builders page, and through books on kayak and boat building . Rather than each customer having to re-invent the wheel finding sources like this, it would be nice if pointers to these sources could be available as part of the instruction manual.

Maybe I'll hack together a web page of this, and ask Nick about the possibility of including this information on his site (there already is some excellent information on the web pages around this bbs, I'd have to see if I really could constructivly add to that information.) This still leaves other Pygmy (or perhaps CLC as well) customers to have to search for this supplemental information.

dave