: Hello all,
: I am hopefully going to be skinning my wife’s boats and mine this weekend.
: I'm going to be using 8oz nylon that I got from Dyson. Does any body have
: any suggestions or helpful hints? All I have to go by are the three books
: that I have (Morris, Starr, & Cunningham). Does any body know about
: how long it takes to skin an 18 1/2 foot Greenland kayak?

: Any help would be great
: Thanks
: Richard
I have yet to use nylon but I have read that it should be applied in as cool an enviroment as possible and keep it wet as you sew. One important thing I learned,the skin on the kayak is not the place to experiment with your finish. Especially if you are going to add any type of color to your kayak. Mix different batches of color and apply it to some scraps of fabric and keep accurate records of what you mix up so you can replicate it in a larger batch for the kayak. Also,get as much tension longitudinally as you can and then try to get some more. Dont use chisel point staples, if you opt to use staples instead of push-pins, use the ones with the angled points, they won't eat up the fabric as much.
The actual skinning took me about 12 hours for a 22' kayak with no darts which you shouldn't need either.
Get a thimble, save your blood for the Red Cross. It looks terrible on a kayak.
Try to get your first coat through the fabric as completely as possible especially with the nylon. Though I suspect this shouldn't be much of a problem with 8oz fabric. I used a squeegee to apply my first coat.
I only have CC's book, so I employed parts of his method and some of Bill Lowe's method(hammock for longitudinal tension) and am satisfied with the results for a first attempt.