: 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.

I'm going to jump in here even though both my builds were Spring Run designs. When I set up my forms, I was short about 1 1/2" of having the design length. I checked and re-checked my form spacing and when I confirmed they were right, I sent Joe Greenly an e-mail asking for help. The difference turned out to be the outer stems that were not yet installed. Once they were installed, my boat was within 1/4" of the design length.

My second boat on the same forms is about 1/2" short of design length and it turns out it's partly due to thinner outer stems and form spacing. However, everything fits just fine and I'm no longer stressing about these small differences.

Bob Beaullieu