: Have a think about making a curved external strongback.

: I made mine a couple of years ago, and it's been hanging in my
: basement with a boat that's slowly progressing sitting on it
: ever since. I had a look at the alignment marks I put on it the
: other day, and it's still perfectly straight.

: From memory it cost me less than $20 to build including screws.

: If you're engineering inclined, then the exercise of figuring out
: all the angles is quite fun for an evening.

I love the sprung strongback. I've built over 10 different kayaks (strip and SOF) on the one I built back in late 2006. It doesn't need to be that complicated. I'm an engineer. I understand the math but I didn't go through the calcs? I laminated the sides out of 1/2" plywood (glue and screws), sprung the sides apart with some scraps to make it a usable width (about 20"). For the rest of the dividers I transferred the length and cut angles directly to the divider stock, cut them on the chopsaw and then attached them with 2" screws.

It lacked a bit of rigidity since I only made the sides 4" tall. So I screwed my old 2x4 internal SB to the bottom. It also allowed me to reuse the same stands. Ended up being a slick little system. It's definitely not as pretty as Simeon's! Here's an old post about it.

http://clearstreamwood.com/WordPress/projects/200611-black-pearl/black-pearl-strongback-info