: I plan to build a Nick
: Schade strip coaming. I'm wondering what's the best way to glass it
: and the lip. How strong will it be ?

There's quite a lot of curve on a cockpit coaming - but if you cut glass
on the bias, it will stretch and fit much better. I built a Nick-style
coaming on my 5/6 Great Auk, using his idea of rope for the lip. A
kernmantel rope, thoroughly saturated in resin before glassing gives a
smooth enough finish for the spraydeck not to leak. To cut the rope to
the exact length for a neat fit, I saturated the sheath in resin near the
ends (having cut it slightly overlength first) then when that had cured,
I cut the rope on a neat 45 degree angle with a razor saw. The core gets a
bit fuzzy, but soak that in resin and fit the ends together and all the
fuzziness goes inside.

I used one layer of glass from the underside of the deck right over the
lip and tucked back under the rope lip - three or four sections make it
easy to proceed without getting into a mess, and the short overlaps don't
really show. I got a few bubbles under the glass just where it curls under
the outside of the lip - but you have to look real hard to see under there.

Strong ? If you have a good fillet round the outside of the uprights, the
result seems pretty bombproof. My kids climb in and out over the coaming
(it was built for my daughter) with impunity, and 8 and 5 year olds know
how to abuse equipment !

: I have a scanner but never really used it

If you have it installed at all, then any photo manipulation package
(The GIMP works on Windows as well as Linux, and I believe you can get all
sorts of other photo packages at various levels from simple to sophisticated
for Windows - many of them free or shareware on Magazine cover discs)
will offer you a menu item like "choose source" under SANE (for Unixy OS's)
or TWAIN (for Windows) - your scanner should show up there, so just click
to choose it as the place to get new pictures. Then you will find a menu
item like "import => scan (name of your scanner)" which will open a dialogue
in which you can get a preview (a small pic from the scanner) then choose
the exact bit of photo you want to scan, and hit a button "scan" usually.
Like any computer package, you just experiment, opening all the menu items
(close the ones you don't want or don't yet understand). "Save (as)" is
usually somewhere obvious, and there you have your photo. If you get a choice
of formats, save as a JPEG ( .jpg) for use on the web.

: Need to know steps to post pics

Your ISP almost certainly offers you some free web space - use it ! There
should be info on how to go about putting files from your computer onto
that web space on your ISP's support pages. If you are happy with the
command line (usually a far simpler way of doing things than "Wizards"
that don't actually tell you how to do the job yourself next time) then
you will certainly find a simple ftp client on your machine to talk to
the web server. Use your browser to check that you know the URL of your
webspace and the photo(s) are where you think they are, then pop the URL
in the "Optional Image URL" field when you post a message to the board.

Like building a kayak, it sounds complicated, but it is just a series of
small, easily mastered, single steps that you can learn to do one bit at
a time, checking for mistakes at each stage. Computers have one big
advantage over kayaks - there is usually an "undo" option for the real
cocks-up :-)

Andy

Andy