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I have finally found something I hate worse than taping dry-wall seams, this would be taping the inside seams of our kayaks. Fortunately it only took me ten hours to do both boats’ seams. As I was doing this I swore I would never build another strip kayak. Once it was over with though all the bad feelings past and I can’t wait to start the next one – after the kitchen cabinets, computer room in the basement, and a SOF boat.

On Wednesday the 9th of July we started mating the decks and hulls together, this is how it went. The Great Auk’s seams were easy to align and they stayed taped together well. Along with the packing tape, we also hot glue tacking it as needed usually every foot or so. The hardest part to aligning the Auk was right behind the cockpit where the hull sheer-strip met the deck sheer-strip at about a twenty degree angle. The reason this became difficult was that we used a ratcheting tie-down strap to force the deck in and sticks to pry the hull out for most of the boat this worked really well. The whole alignment process on the Auk took about three hours.

Thursday the tenth we aligned the Guillemot’s seams. I told my wife Beth after we had aligned the Auk’s seams that it looked like her boat would basically align its self, man was I wrong. I thought we would start at the bow because it looked to me like it required aligning the most. As we made our way down the boat we started having trouble. It started about four-feet in from the bow in approximately the same location as the hatch cover. We had to do some major tweaking of the seam – approximately three-quarters of an inch - to get them to line up. After about two hours we finally made our way behind the cockpit. Then on to the finish line, we reached the stern four hours after we had started.

Friday morning on the way to getting in the car I opened the garage to have a look. And as I had expected the bow of the Guillemot had sprung on one side. After work we tacked it back together and used a couple of tie-down straps to hold it in place. We rolled out two lengths of 2-inch by 9-ounce tape, then I proceeded to cut one in half for the one inch piece of tape. That didn’t work at all it just frayed into pieces and I pitched it into the trash. As a result of this we now have two 2-inch layers of tape 18-ounces worth. The taping was hard to do and progressed slowly. I think it is like trying to push a wet piece of yarn uphill all the while looking through a hole the size of a small cold air return grate in your house’s heating system. By nine-o’clock Friday night both boat’s port side seams were taped and just waiting to cure. Saturday I repeated the process on the starboard side of the boats. I made better time on Saturday. Sunday we rested regained our energy and pondered how soon the project would end.

I found out a neat way to wet out the tape. We buy 8-ounce plastic cups to do our epoxy mixing. I put the epoxy in the cup mix it, then stuff the balled-up tape inside. Instead of kneading it with my hands I place an empty cup inside of the one containing the tape and epoxy – making a sandwich. Then I just squash the two together about eight or ten times. I found that this quickly and completely wets out the glass. Most of all it keeps the epoxy off of your gloves.

Thanks, Mike Sundman

P.S. Sorry for the editorial