Greg,
Thanks for the kind words.

I am deeply into the "if only I had done this a little better" stage on the boat build, but am trying to focus on the fact that since you learn from your mistakes, by the time this boat is in the water I will be a flaming genius...

In case it will be of help to you, I will prattle on about some build issues. Note that this is my first boat so treat my experiences with appropriate caution.

Firstly, no bead and cove. It was probably that I did not take the time to cut them correctly that caused me problems with the B&C strips I applied. However after applying all but three strips by simply doing a rolling bevel, I cannot imagine why people go through the drama of using B&C strips. Maybe this is my inexperience showing…

I am not really going stapleless. I use them freely wherever I think they can help. For an awful lot of the boat I have not needed them. Since I am stripping down from the keel, up from the sheer lines, and out from both sides of the waterline, I was able to use clamps for VERY many strips, since I am not clamping around the curve of the hull. That is, the distance the clamp has to span is relatively short, so the clamp is pulling in more of a straight line.

4-inch and 6-inch trigger action clamps are very useful, and I recommend them over a pile of spring clamps. I mainly use spring clamps when I am joining strips to hold the scarfs together while the glue dries. Almost all the strips are scarfed and then glued together on the hull – that makes tapering the ends very easy since you are not trying to taper the ends AND arrive at the correct strip length all in one process. The scarf joints are visible as a curved line on the sanded strips, but not glaring, so they do not bother me.

About half way through the work so far, I made my biggest breakthrough - rubber bands! Get heaps - including some BIG buggers - and you can clamp almost anyplace on the boat. Wrap 'em around the group of strips to which you are adding, slip a short scrap of strip through the ends od the band to hold it, and you are away. A big rubber band looped through one half of the hull and over the ends of a longish strip will flex that strip and enable you to provide "inward" pressure to force a strip into a gap - really useful for the tapered ends. Because of that I would recommend not filling the gaps at the ends of the keel (made when you lay down the first keel strips) until the sides of the hull are finished.

A few screws placed on the face of the forms AWAY from the centre of the boat and some long (or joined) rubber bands provide a means to pull the strips hard up against the forms and into hard contact with each other. I put duct tape on the form edges and the glkue will simply not stick to it. That is a bit unfortunate as I would be using even fewer staples if there was a little adhesion between the forms and the strips. I think masking tape might provide a good balance between adhesion and being able to get the forms free. The duct tape means that I cannot use hot glue in place of staples now.

The other decision I am really happy with is my choice to use Polyurethane glue. I have not tried gorilla grip or any of the other bottle types, so my comments may not apply to them. I am using AV515 from http://www.avsyntec.com.au/Adh/AV515.htm. It comes in tubes like caulking compound, and I chose it because the PVA’s all creep badly under northern Australian sun. It sands like a dream so there is no scraping of the hull (Aussie red cedar simply turns into fuzz if you scrape with anything less than a scalpel-sharp blade). Best of all for the first 10 – 15 minutes after application it will allow me to move the strips in and out to improve alignment of the edges, yet still grab the strips once I stop playing with them, and in under an hour set to the point where I can be reasonably rough with the strips so I can add the next one. Given that I could be fitting strips at 5 different places on the hull without disturbing clamps, a delay of an hour while a strip sets up doesn’t slow building. In fact it ensures I chat to my wife now and again, a VERY sensible step if you plan on being alive AND married when the boat is finished!

Regards, Tony