Hello everyone! I'm new to the site, and VERY new to kayak building. In fact, I've been in a Kayak for a grand total of maybe an hour in my entire life. However.....my son and I wanted a winter project, so we thought building a couple of Kayak's would be fun. We're building his first which is a 14 foot Great Auk. We've built the stands, and the 12 foot internal strongback, and have cut out the forms. We're to a point where we ready to align the forms, but have run into some questions off the bat. If anyone has built a 14 foot Great Auk from Nick's plans and could help us out, it would be very much appreciated.

Question 1: When I place the bow and stern ends on the strongback, the total boat length measures 13 feet 10 1/2 inches rather than 14 feet. I realize that a half inch of that will be added by strip thickness (1/4 inch or so on either end), but how about the missing inch? Am I missing something critical? I added an inch to the strongback by glueing on a shim, but am wondering if this is the right thing to do.

Question 2: On the bow and stern plans, there are marks for the 0.5 and 1 forms (and 13 & 13.5 forms in the stern), but they are only 5.25 and 11.25 inches from the tip of the boat respectively. Again, 1/4 inch would be added by strip thickness, but still there's a missing 1/5 inch. Any idea on how I should go about aligning forms?

Thanks in advance for any help I can get on these issues. I've been reading this Forum for a few weeks, and it sure seems to be full of great people, and great advice.