You know what they say about unsolicited advice, but I'm gonna give my 2 cents anyway.

A couple pieces of advice about the ends of the kayak, which don't get too thorough a treatment on Tom's site.

Make your stern and stem pieces the same width material as the keel stringer. When I do another one, instead of using 1/2" ply for the end pieces, I'm going to use the same pine boards that I rip for the stringers. Naturally, when I mounted my end pieces, and glued them to the keel, I couldn't get them perfectly centered on the keel. (1/2" ply butted to 3/4" keel.) It now annoys me when the kayak is on the car, and I can see that lopsided joint through the skin.

Also, if you are gluing the gunwales to the section, pinch the ends together before the glue (epoxy, whatever) cures, to fair the curve at station 1 and 8 - don't glue and then try to pinch the ends of the gunwales. I have unfairness at station 1 and 8, that I can see, and I worry about the stress riser there, but not too much, 'cos it's pretty strong...

Make sure your gunwales fair out to the end of the bow piece, or very close to the end (I cut my gunwales as long as I thought they should be, then made the stem piece. The gunwales end maybe 9" or 10" back from the tip.) I think the best way to do this is to make breast hooks to cap the end of the gunwale to stem piece joint. If I did mine over again, I'd make a breast hook no less than 6" long, and have it end no more than 3" from the tip of the bow. With the 1/2" ply, my bow looks unnaturally skinny, and that it will break off given any opportunity at a side load (like carrying the boat and forgetting there is ~7' in front of you.) Mine hasn't had a catastrophe like that, but it looks like it wants to.

Ack, I've been sitting in front of the computer too long during this snow storm, and I think my brain is turning to mush. I'm going to stop my advice now, before this gets incoherent, out of hand, or both...

Brian

: I have the materials to build a wooden frame Yost Sea Rider and I
: was looking through Tom's site trying
: to determine the length of the gunwales, chines, keel and deck
: stringers. I have these numbers in my notes
: and I'd swear I found them somewhere in one of the manuals at
: yostwerks:

: gunwales 1.5 x .75 inch
: 2 - 20 ft

: keel chine, deck stringers 1 x.75 inch

: 17 ft keel
: 2 - 17 ft chines
: 12 ft deck stringers (2 - 4 ft, 2 - 2 ft. ?)

: I need to scarf the longer pieces up so it would be helpful to be
: more certain of the lengths I will need, but for the
: life of me, I can't find the reference now on yostwerks.com that
: cites 20 ft for gunwales, 17 feet for keel and chines?
: Or did I just make that up?

: --
: Ogata, eric