Stephen,

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to build a baidarka inspired kayak under the tutelage of Skip Snaith (http://www.rockisland.com/~kyak/) up on Orcas Island last summer. The way Skip does ribs worked great for us. He sets the keel in exactly the way he wants it to end up by clamping verticals of scrap to the deck beams around the cockpit and at the ends - then tying the keelson on with twine. We discussed how deep we wanted the cockpit and set the rest based on that. Then it was easy to bend the hot oak ribs to shape. After cutting the ribs down and fitting them in the mortices - we just lashed the keelson in. I'm thinking we set the stringers in place as well. I have a bunch of pictures I've been meaning to post. I'll try to get my lazy self to do that this week. We put oak ribs in the cockpit area and willow elsewhere. The oak was more fun and more work. The willow was easy and actually dries to nice hard strong ribs. I have found a couple of nice willow patches in riparian areas here in the Phoenix area - but so far no source for green oak - though I haven't been to any mills yet.

Anyway - that's what we did and it worked great.

Have fun. Bending the ribs and cockpit was perhaps my favorite part of building the baidarka. I'm looking forward to doing it again later this year.

Cheers,
PC