Hi Eric,

If you are looking for this to be a business venture, I would suggest you either:

1).. Pick a commercial design & speak to the plan owner to gain his permission to make them. This may involve payment of a licence fee, or in the worst case he may refuse permission. Better to take care of that issue now rather than later.

or

2).. Approach an established designer to design one especially for your needs. Some have a history of doing this (ie Eric @ Shearwater, Matt @ JEM Watercraft) & others will decline (Vaclav @ One Ocean).

I have enourmous fun designing then building my own SOF boats. If the design works, great ! If it doesn't, well, at least I had lots of fun doing it & I learn for next time. However, you being a novice, designing one yourself for paying customers would be EXTREMELY risky... especially if it's a big-dollar item like a custom-built striper.

As a former kayaker turned kayak shop owner, I can assure you that as soon as your hobby becomes your work, it looses some of the fun.

If you really want to go this route, maybe this would be a way of managing the risk:

1).. Design your own boat, but make it chined (single or multi) hull rather than a shallow arch. That way you can prototype it relatively quickly & cheaply as a SOF construction, and the inevitable modifications are much easier to make.

2).. Once you are happy with the hull shape, you can offer the design as either a full strip-built, or as a hybrid (stitch-n-glue hull & striped deck). That way you also have 2 price-points to offer customers. The proto SOF can become your demo model buyers can test.

Just an idea... feel free to criticise.

Regards,

Phil.

: I am very interested in building a strip-built kayak, from plans of course,
: but have found that the choice of designs are varied and they all look so
: pretty, so narrowing down my choice is not easy. I currently work in
: antique boat restoration and am restoring three Chris-Crafts: a 1939
: 19'Barrellback, a 17'barrellback, a '46 deluxe utility; also a 46 Garwood
: utility, 1930's vintage Old Town canoe, and a 1924 Dodge runabout. I have
: no doubt as to my skill to make a nice kayak of my own.
: Because the financial commitment to building a kayak is substantially less
: than the above mentioned boats (none of them are mine personally), I can
: afford to build a kayak.
: My question is this. If things turn out well, I would be interested in
: selling the kayaks that I build, after seeing the prices that some
: builders can command. But I assume that it would be unethical for me to
: sell a Redfish or Clc or others' kayaks commercially so how would I go
: about getting a design of my own. I don't have a design background of my
: own, so any advice would be greatly appreciated.