: Hi all,

: I am about ready to turn my haul over and start building my deck. I am going
: to dowell them together so I can fair it all together before I do any
: glassing. Has anyone tried this? The first deck strip I lay on my haul
: shear strip would be doweled at intervels using either wood or welders
: bronze rods cut for my dowels.The dowels would be ground to a point with
: about 1/8" of full dowell dia. for seating in the dowel hole. This
: should allow easy perfect mating of the two halfs later on and they could
: be glued into place and it could be glassed without any strip glassing
: over the deck-haul seam, but simply overlaped with the haul glassing and
: the deck glassing. That would give you a double glassing of a seam that
: was already glued in the mating. There would be no reason to do any
: trimming on the main cloths. I have read on the board that usually some
: warping takes place and the two halves sometimes don't match up. It looks
: like the dowelling would take care of this as they should lock back into
: place. The first dowelled deck strip would be nailed at intervals with
: small brads to hold it firmly to the haul shear strip. When both haul and
: deck are sanded and faired, then seperated, the brads would be pulled
: through the strip with pliers. I hope this makes sence. When I read
: something like this, my eyes glaze over.

: John

John & Roy

I too have pondered this situation after listening to all the talk and problems with decks and hulls not lining up and/or being warped out of shape. I would like to do the dowel pinning as well, simply because I don't have a bisquit cutter( they don't give them away just yet:). But, also consider this: your problem might be achieving perfect alignment, with either tool. With a bisquit cutter, you HAVE to line up the cuts perfectly, and if you use a dowel jig, same situation. The problem lying in the fact that you don't have a flat/straight surface to work on as all the boats I've seen ( and you made reference to strip-building )have rounded shapes. This fact alone would make it impossible to get that "perfect" alignment. And without perfect alignment of the holes, you've accomplished nothing toward your goal of the perfect joint. You might get it very close, but.....?? you might not. Doing either freehand is guess-work at best.

If you do decide to do either, then don't over do it with the bisquits or dowels. It is very difficult to align twenty or thirty dowels at the same time. You get a couple in and then it rocks on some others and they all pop out. If I were doing it, and I may...... I would space the dowels/bisquits about two or three feet apart and keep them to a minimum height, say 1/4" or less. Food for Thought!!

Rehd