I have used wood balls that I bought from one of the craft-y stores, probably Michaels or AC Moore. I found drilling them out was failure-prone. I dipped them in urethane varnish, I think 2 coats, and they have held up well for years.

Here's another option I used on my skin on frame. I stole this idea from one of Turner Wilson's boats. He probably saw it on some historical museum piece somewhere.

Anyway, as you can see from the picture, I sliced off pieces from a dowel, and drilled a hole in the middle. I sanded the edges to a bevel. You could use whatever hardwood dowel that had a satisfactory diameter, available from either big blue box or big orange box store.

For my SOF, I actually went into the woods, and found some nice branches that had been cut alongside the trail by someone several years earlier. They still had smooth bark on them. I painted them with Dura-Tuff. So far, the Dura-Tuff and bark has held up well on the disks shown in the pic. The longer pieces of branch I used for deck rigging sliders has cracked (checking) as a result of wet and dry cycles, but not cracked all the way through. Also, the bark has begun to lift off the wood. I completely expected the bark to flake off over time, regardless of the Dura-Tuff, so I'm not worried. I figured if the slider ever wants to crack right in half, and fall off the deck rigging, I could fix it with epoxy, or maybe I'd pull the rigging and re-do with some flatter sliders. My friend Laura has beautiful walnut sliders she made. (I'll get her to make me some, if I ever need them. Heh.)

I have toyed with the idea of adding another piece of transverse deck rigging across the fore deck, to use for attaching a deck bag when I'm teaching. I figured if I did that, I would tie two knots in the leather thong, to raise it slightly off the deck, and make it easier to slide the deck bag attachment underneath. I have not done this yet, because I'm sufficiently lazy, and because I hate having the deck bag up there in the first place. Makes the boat handle like crap. Ahh, the fine tuned trim of a low volume skin on frame...

I think that tying some overhand knots in the deck rigging would not be sufficient to raise it off the deck. But, then again, why does the perimeter rigging need to be tight enough to lay flat on the deck? A little slack in the system never hurt anyone, and actually makes it much easier to get a grip and hang on.

From a safety standpoint, I know I should do perimeter rigging on the SOF, but I just can't bring myself to clutter the deck like that... Sorry, BCU guys...

Brian

: I finished the build of my daughter's kayak and I've been playing around in
: my head with deck rigging. I've decided that I want to add perimeter
: lines. The deck rigging would be pretty tight to the deck so I'd like to
: put wood balls on them (ala Brian Nystrom).

: The deck line should come today - I'm trying to figure out where to buy the
: wood balls? Is this something that is typically at craft stores (big box
: places - JoAnn, AC Moore, Michael's, etc.)? Hardware stores? Hobby shops?
: or...?

: Thanks.

: -Doug