: When ripping my gunwales for my SOF I managed to get a massive gouge about
: 1/3 the way along the gunwale. This took the thickness down to around
: 15mm, quite a bit less than I felt secure with. Not having enough material
: available to make a new set of gunwales the solution appears to be to take
: both gunwales down until the gouge was gone, then rip strips from the
: offcut and laminate to bring the gunwales back to size.

What style of SOF kayak are you building? With some the gunwale is nothing more than a rub strip. On others the gunwale is mortised to hold the ends of the ribs.

Since the gouge is on the interior, if I didn't have to mortise it, I'd leave it alone (not rip it off). If I thought the strength of the wood was compromised by the gouge I'd simply strengthen the area. You could fill it with thickened epoxy and chopped glass fibers, or you could back up the area with your thin strips ripped from your offcuts.

Or you could reinforce the area with a few strips of resin-soaked glass cloth. You could put these on just the one side, or wrap them around the wood.

It would be easiest to bend the pieces to shape first, then glue on the reinforcements.

If you are required to mortise the gunwale for ribs, then your first idea can be modified to assist you, rip off the gouged area and reduce the thickness of the gunwale to the the thickness of your rib stock plus half of the difference between the specified gunwale size and the rib thickness.

For example: If the specified gunwale thickness is 19mm and the ribs are 7 mm thick, then the difference between these is 12 mm. You would want to reduce your to gunwales 13 mm thick. Then, you would eventually add a 6 mm strip to it to bring it back to 19mm.

Before you add on that strip, though, you can cut your mortises with a dado, a router or a backsaw (or a japanese pull-saw) and a chisel. The dadoes/mortises are cut just as deep as the thickness of the ribstock. If you cut all the way across the gunwale strip, but really want a closed mortise, then after asembling the grooved gunwale strip with the additional strip, you can plug the ends of these mortises with a small chunk of rib material and some glue.

Just some thoughts

PGJ