My teenage son and I are each building a kayak. I am building a Great Awk and he is building a Guillemot. I am a little further than he is, but progress is being made. Or, I should say, progress was being made. I screwed up and we must start over on his boat.

We are using half-width strips to work our way around the chines of the Guillemot. We have 5 regular strips leading up from the shear line to the chines and then switch to narrow strips. They work great at working across the chine. However, the problem I had was in using these strips at the bow and stern. I need to bend the strips to follow the curve of the boat and twist the strips to line them up with the previous strip and the stem. The twisting is the problem. The narrow strips don't clamp very well and there is little width to staple. In my screw-up, the strips un-twisted while the glue was drying. This caused the strips to be grossly out of alignment.

Since relatively little work had been invested so far, I didn't want to "work around" my error. We made the collective decision to strip off the strips already put on the boat and start over.

The problem is this. I don't know how to avoid the problem again. I sure could use some wise counsel from the members.

Thanks.
Chuck