Here is the experience I had putting the deck on my CLC 17. In spite of the fact that my planing of the sheer clamps was less than professional - the deck went on real easy.

I put the rear deck on using 3 or 4 straps and nails. I did a trial fit - liked how it looked - prepped the surfaces - put epoxy thickened with silica on the sheer clamps and the deck underside (I marked the deck underside with a pencil during the test fit. I had made one of the little spacing tools shown in the Chessy plans - because I was deathly scared of putting a nail through the hull. I laid the deck in place - applied the straps starting at the stern - and pounded in the nails as I went. I think I had to move straps two or three times. Everything went perfectly. I even managed to pound the nails in without marking up the deck or bending anything - quite an accomplishment for me.

Then I took a break - it was about 11pm - but I was all stoked up and wanted to finish the job. It was too late to pound nails on my back porch without waking up the neighborhood - so I did the front deck with strapping tape. I went through the same procedure as the back - but wrapped packing tape instead of pounding nails. This worked out great too. However, in the morning - a couple of wraps had slipped. These were the ones where I failed to overlap the tape onto itself. If you use strapping tape - make sure you wrap it around the full circumference and overlap onto itself by several inches. All the wraps applied in this manner held. I think I also ranked the tape much tighter than needed -and I may not have wiped the hull down as well as I should have. In any case - I was horrified to see the resulting waves in my beautiful deck. But rather than throwing a tantrum as I would have years ago - I set out to fix things up. I filed the hardened epoxy off the under side of the deck and sheer clamps as best I could. Then I went in with sandpaper and various scrapers and wood remanants until the spread sections were looking pretty good. Then mixed up some glue - smeared it in as best I could and strapped it down. I ended up with some small gaps - but pretty fair lines. I filled the gaps with some epoxy putty. It's not perfect - but nobody can notice but me. In fact after rounding the sheer - it looks kind of cool - one more line of color.

Oh yea - I went back and put unnecessary nails in the front for symmetry. I kind of like the way the brass looks. Since you have the stitch holes anyway - and I was in a hurry to paddle - so just put the footbrace screws through the hull - I wasn't too worried about perfection.

For me - attaching the decks was fun and easy and I'm no handyman w/ little building experience.

Go for it!

BTW - Ted Moores puts the sheer clamp on the deck in his Kayakcraft book - never would have thought of that.

PC