: Has anyone built a wood bottom skin side and deck hybrid?
: is it possible?
: is there such an animal?
: thanks,
: pete

There are a few variations of this to consider. Basically the concern is whether the skin is glued to the wood bottom, or whether the cloth skin is continuous and is underneath, or over, the wood bottom.

If you allow for the wooden part to come above the water line then you basically have a canoe with a tight-fitting cloth cover. Dave Hazen's book shows a method for attaching such a cloth cover to a canoe by cutting a kerf in the underside of the gunwale, where it is out of site and will not catch water. The cloth for the top is stretched over this kerf and pressed into it. A spline of thin rope pressed in with the cloth provides sufficient tension to keep the cloth in place. To quickly remove the cover, should that be necessary, it is only necessary to tug on the spline and peel it out of the kerf, allowing the fabric to come free.

A fabric cover like this could be tailored with one or two (or more) sprayskirts sewn into place, or secured in place with velcro.

The cover can be stretched flat across the top of the boat, or you can add arched cover supports that rest on the gunwales.

The hull of the boat can be a conventional canoe, or it can be a design that is closer in looks to a kayak hull.

If you look at the archives you can see how Mike Hanks used his forms for a skinned Putz Walrus and created a plywood version. If he had simply applied plywood to the bottom of the boat, and the wrapped the entire boat with his fabric, then the fabric would serve as a waterproof covering over the wood ( and the rest oif the hull) while the interior wood planks would provide some stiffness and some resistance to abrasion. In birchbark canoe construction the bark skin was filled out with bent wood ribs, and the space between the ribs and the bark was filled with short, wide pieces of thin flat wood strips.

When birchbark became scarce and canvas was used as a covering, instead, canoes were still built in that fashion, although the construction process seemed to go in a different order. The boats were built from the ribs and wood strip covering, and then the canvas was applied to that.

Lets look at it the other way. If he had covered the boat with fabric, and then added his plywood panels to the outside, probably nailing, or screwing them into the wooden interior chines, then he would be basically armor-plating his boat's bottom. Sealing the holes where the nails or screws go through the skin would be the only issue.

The third option would be if he put on the wood boat bottom first, and then glued the bottom edge of the fabric to the wood, allowing a wide enough joint for good adhesion. Then he could carry the fabric up and cover the rest of his boat with it.

hope this helps.

Just wondering why you are asking, though. Is there a story here? The germ of an idea? Anything you want to share?

PGJ