Hi Steve,

Just wondering that you need a new kettle, cause you must have already done a lot of steaming for the tail. Soaking the little strips for as long as a week before steaming helps too. I have a good heat gun so may try that too with the tail deck. I took a long time to fair all the deck forms (19 for me remember).Maybe that is why Rob has changed to 9 now :-) Had a lot of head scratching and time to get the curves right even though all my forms were made and set up right. Had to see what was high and what was low and figure how to bring it in to a graceful flow with lots of sanding and adding tape strategically to the right places. And reattaching some of the hull shears to the forms with more hot glue. By the way does your front deck (just back of the bow deck) have a bulge there and then get thinner as it goes back from there before starting to curve upward again ? This is the only thing I have yet to decide if it is right or not. I was thinking that the curve should just keep climbing up from the bow, but as I say station 2 is higher than either station 1 or 3 (thus the bulge). I have sanded it down some but haven't decided yet to sand it down so the curve is only rising with out any bulge, because it may be supposed to be this way and it does have a certain "look" to it that I like (may be designed that way too for more bouyancy). Have been also playing with my deck strips to come up with the pattern (you set a high mark to follow:-) going to take another look at the bow later today (with a fresh mind) and start on the shear strips. It looks to be that stripping the deck is much easier than the hull and i have all my best looking strips saved for the deck so I am looking forward to it, just had to get all the forms faired up right and that was real slow for me. By the way what are you using to glue your deck strips ?? I attached a page from a man who was kind enough to post his pictures and experience of building the NS (this is the page about stripping the tail deck, but much more is on his site).

Take care,

Arthur