O.K. Paul and co. here are a few ideas that I have either discovered or obtained from others building the Walrus. Be aware that I'm building the 18 1/2'er and most or all of the others are building the 17'er. I don't know that the forms are any different ( other than in size ) or the problems for that matter, but I'll tell you what I've tried.

First, here are the links to Bill Price and Roger Nuffer's sites and that will give you some ideas of what she'll look like as she grows and takes shape. Both have had some different ideas as well, during the building of their boats.

Bill Price: http://www.uidaho.edu/~bprice/kayak/kayak3/

Roger Nuffer: This is Rogers profile only as his web-site is not available except through contacting him I suppose. http://www.kayakforum.com/cgi-bin/Building/index.cgi?profile=roger+nuffer

Mike Hanks will have to jump in here and offer his web-site as I don't seem to be able to locate it. He has/had some very interesting changes he might offer you as well. One would be to lower ( shorten ) the end-blocks a bit and thus raise the bow and stern of the boat. It's pretty flat otherwise. But, I'll leave that up to him to tell you. He's got lots more info than I.......

Here, I hope, are the numbers, as written by Paul Jacobson a while back, for the 17'er and 18 1/2'er Walrus. This is stolen from my " under construction " Web-Site and I hope they will show up. If not, then I think either Paul or Mike Hanks can give you their copies. Also, there are others using them so that shouldn't be a problem.

http://www.slip.net/~pfinkie/Rehd/walrus/walrus.htm

If it comes up alright, then click on the white boxes at the top and each will come up. Please disregard the typo's on the page as I'm a mere 6'3" tall and don't drink, so the beerely is a bit out of context.

The first thing I did with the forms patterns was to start at the gunwales and cut out all of the extra material so they would fit exactly on the top of my 10" wide work surface, so my forms look pretty much like mushrooms. That helped save material as you can see from the pics in Putz' book, and also allowed me to get a little closer to my work. No corners sticking out in the livingroom.

I used 3/4" doug-fir plywood for the forms because others were having problems with 1/2" ply and particle board because of the torque applied when twisting the stringers near the bow and stern of the boat. The 3/4" stock held up very well and my forms are ready to build the next boat.

On all the forms where the stringers attach, they need to have relief cuts made in the top side of the hole. If you don't cut the relief, you will not be able to get the boat frame up off the forms without damaging either one or the other. I believe that Roger and Bill both had this problem.

I also found that when I cut out the forms I would have a problem on form # 1 because the relief cut would be too close to the keelson and may have left it too weak to hold up under the torquing of the stringers when being attached.

Keep in mind that I altered the plans a little and decided to go with a verticle 3/4" x 1 1/2" keelson, set down into the forms rather than the smaller sized piece called for in the book. My idea was/is that I am around 60 to 80 lbs heavier that the folks that the boat was originally designed around and felt a bit uneasy with the size stringers called for. I am neither a professional builder or designer so I can neither give you a yeh or ney on the feasability of this alteration.

As I mentioned, I increased the size of all the longitudinal members; keelson, stringers, chines and gunwales for a couple of reasons. One I mentioned and the other was laziness. I didn't want to be cutting and recutting all my stringers so I used everything in the thickness of my basic stock and just cut all the material to 1" widths. Yes, my boat will be a bit heavier than normal, and again, I can't recommend this, but Bill volunteered me for the Destruction Derby at R2K1, so I figured I'd best be prepared. I have yet to add the skin ( and paint ), floor-boards or seats and I'm tipping the scales at around 25 lbs.

A couple of recommendations I might mention would be the use of Plummers Tape to attach the frame members to the forms, rather than screwing them all on. I don't like the idea of all that broken grain and patchwork when you have to go back and patch and fill all those holes. Everywhere you drill a hole to attach to forms, you will eventually have another hole within a couple of inches when you attach the floors to the frame members. In my album I show how I used the tape to hold all the stringers down and must say that it probably took a little longer, but I believe it was well worth it. It works best when you put all the P.T. on the same side of all the forms and all facing the same direction except the end forms, which you should use on the inside of the form. My thinking ( after I did it the wrong way and had to correct it ) was that you will have to put the floors on right up close to the forms and then halfway between the forms, and if you have the P.T. on the side with the floor, you will not be able to get the screwdriver in to remove the P.T. !!! Also. if you put the tape on the outside of forms #1 and #6 it will be too cramped to get into that area to remove the screws and P.T.

I used 3/8" dowels to attach all the floors to the stringers. First I drilled and screwed them together when glueing with the epoxy/filler glue and when all was cured, I removed the screws and redrilled and installed dowels. A much stronger joint "in my opinion." ( Actually, you should remove the screws after a couple of hours, or when the filler is partially cured or they will be tough to get out. I broke two off and had to fill over the drilled out heads, but don't tell anyone ) Wood has a tendancy to expand and contract and when doing this around screws, they get loose and lose some of their grip. On the other hand, when dowels are glued in, they do not lose their grip. They add gluing surface by about double in the joints and the wood will break before the glue seperates.

Another idea I didn't use, but will next time, would be when you install your floors, ( the ones next to the forms, put a 1/4" spacer of either plywood or masonite between the two. This way you will be able to glue your floors to the stringers while on the forms and not worry about glueing the frame to the forms and workbench. Thank goodness I noticed this before I started glueing. I glued the floors that were in-between the forms ( I call them "Tweeners" ) and then had to hot glue some false deck beams and remove the frame from the forms a bit prematurely to glue the floors that would have been up against the forms. This boat will be heavy enough without taking the forms and strongbench with it.

When I removed the frame from the forms to do the permanent deck beams, I kept the hot-glued deck-beams on to insure the shape of the boat while off the forms until the permanent beams were in place.

Some things I would not do again, but did them this time because I already had the materials and will just use what I have. I bought the #12 cotton duck for the skin as it's between the #10 and the 10 oz. cloth that others have talked about. It should be lighter than the #10 and stronger than the 10 oz. but I'll wait and see. As I said, I had already bought the material or I would have stuck with the nylons or dacrons and gotten a lighter boat and probably a bit more puncture resistant. That way I could have gone with the Urethane coatings instead of the Latex. Better looks I'm sure. I will probably stay a bit lighter with construction next time.

I am now at the point of sanding the entire frame to round off corners where they will contact the skin and I'll be coating the frame to seal it. I have found that I would have to finish the entire construction process before skinning as I'm doweling all the joints and once the gunwales are covered with the hull skin, I would have to drill through the skin to dowel the deck beams. Not Good!! So, I'm glueing everything except the deck stringers as I will turn the frame over and reinstall it on the forms to stretch the skin on the hull. Then remove the frame and do the deck stringers and skin the deck. I'm also waiting for some vinyl to make my own form-fitting floatation bags and some special 1/8" Bending Plywood to form my cockpit. I had never heard of it until David Barrett, a friend, neighbor and fellow boat builder, mentioned it as we were brainstorming the cockpit process I would use. I don't like the looks or method of construction of Putz' entire cockpit arrangement, so I'm making my own. I've decided to make my boat an " Open-Double " for the folks that are purchasing it after the Port Twonsend show. That means I WILL win the destruction derby guys.

Well Paul I hope this, along with the pictures, offers some additional help for your up-coming project. Again, I don't think you or your friend will have too many problems with this boats construction. The floors are probably the most tedious part of the construction as it's a back and forth, time consuming process. But, Bill offered me some advice here and said that the joints don't have to be perfect, just reasonably close as the epoxy/filler glue is very filling and very forgiving. Takes a bit longer to set and cure, but.....

I'm sure you will run into some interesting problems along the way, as we all do, but there are always more pictures and ideas out there when you need them.

Any other ideas from ya'll out there??

Rehd

Please forgive my spelling.