Hello All~

In my present build, I am currently plane-ing down my cutout panels to final dimensions, and I am hoping to start stitching them together tomorrow night! I am looking ahead and greatly looking forward to my laminating of this boat build. I was hoping to share some of the ideas I intend to use and see others here think of it. I am always up for good constructive criticism.

I have posted an earlier rough design of the boat in the design forum, yet haven't gotten any feedback (ah well). However, I am hoping my construction plans may gain some interest. Remember going into this that I am building a whitewater kayak, not simply a boat for open ocean, so I do intend to take impacts from rocks.

Composite boats are used quite frequently in slalom and whitewater racing, and I figured it would be fun to build a good river runner as a composite. I have learned so much from these forums that I am trying to incorporate some of the construction techniques to see how well they translate over.

Instead of building a Hull and Deck from a mold (how pretty much all whitewater composite boats are built), I am beginning with a Stitch-and-Glue construction. If you look at some of the newer boats hitting the market, they almost look like their prototypes were built in this fashion (ex: Pyranha Karnali). I am beginning as any S&G; cutting out panels and stitching them together. I will make my initial welds, and then pull the wires before creating fillets. From there on, things will get interesting.

I am laminating the inside of the Hull and Deck with a layer of 5oz Kevlar. Once that has setup, I am going to seam the Hull and Deck together with the outside completely unfinished (still bare wood). I am creating the inside seam first with 1" Kevlar Bias tape pressed into the fillets, and then covering that with 2" Kevlar Bias tape.

At that point the thing will look like a wooden whitewater boat (however not very strong yet). I am going to do some final shaping of the edges to finish things off. I then intend to layer the Hull with E-Glass (6oz), Poly (5oz), S-Glass (6oz), Poly (5oz), S-Glass (6oz), and finally finishing the hull with a layer of 5oz Dynel. The deck is going to be finished with S-Glass (6oz), Poly (5oz), S-Glass (6oz), and then finally with E-Glass (4oz). The purpose of the E-Glass on the outside is more so to protect some finishing work I am going to do after that last deck layer of S-Glass.

Anyways, before this gets beyond dangerously long... Where I am intending my construction to be different in that I am going to alternate laminating each layer, from Hull to deck, with overlapping a few of the layers. Basically, instead of completely building out the hull and deck seperately and seaming them together later, I am going to outlap a few of these layers of fabric, thus eliminating the need for tape on that outside whatsoever. And if I stagger these overlaps properly, I should also reduce any stress risers in the laminate.

Obviously there is way more detail than I put into this forum... I have an Outline written up (like 7 pages) if anyone is interested further, and I can email that to you perhaps. Also, if you have any concerns or questions, please feel free to post them. I'm sharing this to hopefully begin a discussion over the laminating technique. Oh, and most importantly, I am intending to use MAS Epoxy.

I know this boat will not be light. The average plastic whitewater boat of 8' in length is around 50#, so if I'm anything below that, I will be happy.

And if you have read this far, I thank you~

~Johnathan