Dan,

Your dialog here and on your blog regarding the external strongback is quite persuasive. I am still thinking of using staples, but if I use, say, 3 hot melt glue dots per form, I could hold the hull forms together with the hull after I detach them from the standoffs without any additional steps, correct? Doing this would appear to add only the time to remove the screws from the standoffs to the forms over the internal strongback approach. But I would gain the rigidity, versatility and other advantages of an external strongback. How integrated is the internal strongback approach in Nick's plans for the Night Heron and Petrel?

: I started building kayaks by building a Guillemot and followed
: Nick's excellent book/plans to the letter. The internal
: strongback worked great. That's how I got my start. It's a bit
: floppy at first but once a few strips are on the rigidity
: quickly increases. I quickly learned that if you're only
: building one or two kayaks, an internal strongback works fine...
: as long as you don't mind modifying it for every design.
:
I like building
: my boats as one piece, separating the two halves later to work
: on the inside. I KNOW it'll go together that way. I've built all
: of my boats as one unit: I strip and glass the hull then
: immediately flip it over and strip and glass the deck with the
: hull still attached to the forms.
: I changed to an external strongback for the construction of three
: BTD Black Pearls for separate customers in 2006-2007. After
: reviewing the plans, it was very obvious that the design would
: not allow the insertion of an internal strongback.

: I've come to appreciate the flexibility (so to speak) of a good,
: stiff external strongback.

: Dan