: If you want to buy the big roll id be happy to take 27 yds off your hands for
: $50.

What do you need 27 yards of fabric for? That sounds like quite a bit, unless you are building two boats. With careful cutting you should be able to get away with using a lot less.

Consider that the shape of the boat is roughly a long diamond shape. Take a scrap of paper and draw out a rough cutting plan to see what I mean. For an 18 foot boat use an 18 inch piece of paper.

For an 18 foot long boat, if you start at the end of your cloth and cut a 9 foot long triangle for covering the front deck, with the point facing toward the bulk of the cloth. then an 18 foot diamond for the bottom of the hull and finally another 9 foot triangle for the rear deck. keep all the points touching. Now look at the "scrap" and you'll see that you have 4 half diamond shapes which are each 18 feet long. Use 2 of these on the inside of the deck and the last two on the inside of the hull. The total length of fabric used here is just 12 yards. Of course I'd get one to two more than this bare minimum, but that puts me at about 13.5 yards, which would be half of what you are considering.

Of course, you can use thes cuts of fabric in different locations. For example, the full sheet can be used on the upper deck so you have no seams. Then the two triangles can be used on the underside of the deck, and the 4 half diamonds can be used on the hull where the overlap along the keel will double your cloth and ive a bit of abrasion resistance in an area likely to need it.

If you can use half the material then your material costs are going to be half of your original estimate.

With 36-38 inch wide material you just might have enough scraps left for making "tapes" for joining the deck and hull, but this might be a trick. Look for wider fabric, say 45 inch material. If you go with 60 inch material you'll have plenty of excess.

Of course, if your concern is to build a kayak for a rock-bottom cost, then you might consider a design which does not even need to be covered with glass. Many stitch and glue designs can be built with only enough glass (in strips or tapes)to cover the seams. You can cut bias strips from only two or three yards of glass cloth to do this nicely. A couple of coats of epoxy resin painted over the wood waterproofs it wonderfully.

And then there are skin on frame boats which don't require any glass cloth, and use minimal amounts of epoxy or resorcinol, or other totally waterproof glue.

PGJ