: Good morning everyone...
: Relatively noob to kayaking and definitely new to building. Closest
: thing to building I've ever done is Ikea furniture....
: Been lurking and researching for the last week or so wanting to
: build a SeaRider. There's so much info out there it's been hard
: to sort it all out and hope you can bear with me on this one.
: I've done forum searches etc and my head is about to burst so
: thought I should straight up ask.
: OK... questions

: A. I have space limitations (condo livin') and my budget does not
: allow me to build a folder so... Can a Sea Rider(or sea cruiser
: maybe) be scaled down to be a 13'-14' boat? Or else can any of
: the shorter LOA boats (ie. sea tour 13) xsections be cut in the
: aft to be same height as gunwale? Will it be noticeably slower
: than a longer boat? Love the aesthetics of a Greenland kayak and
: wanna do quick daytrips, maybe overnighter for now.

: B. I like the lashing technique... do I still need to dowel the
: whole thing?

: C. Are stanchons needed for the coaming baseplate? Is a coaming
: baseplate even needed? I saw Kudzucraft.com video on Polyester
: skinning, which is what I want to use, and he just strapped the
: coaming on there and let the skin become taut from the coaming
: pulling on it post-sewing.

: D. Somewhere I read that pine is heavier/stronger than cedar and
: redwood. That said in this post somewhere, someone said you
: could make pine stringers slightly smaller in width than stated
: in the plans for the purpose of keeping weight down... Does that
: make sense to do? So instead of ie. Sea rider chine/keel
: 1"x .75" it can be .75"x.75" gunwales
: 1.25"x.75"? Will pine take resin well?

: E. HOw in the world do you tint Zar oilbased poly finish?

: I know I'll ask more at some point. Thank you everyone. Respect and
: cheers!

Unless you're a very small person a 19" wide kayak for a new'er kayaker is very likely to be so tippy you'll never paddle it. Not much point in doing that. That's challenging for many fairly experienced paddlers.

Bill H.