: Hello all, this is my first post on this forum after following it
: for a couple of years and finally strip building a kayak. My
: question is really for Robert Pruden related to a recent post
: about putting Maple leaves under the glass. I have the hull done
: on my second build and wanted to try putting some flowers and
: imported butterflies under the glass as a trial for the deck. I
: am trying to avoid problems like you had with the Maple leaves
: and was wondering how you went about applying the leaves and
: what you might do different if you wanted to do it again? My
: thanks to everyone in the forum for all the lessons learned
: before I started my build.

I put a few peices of veneer on my most recent boat, with mixed results. I will try to post some pictures.

1- You could route out a depression in the yak to receive the stuff, then fill it with epoxy. I did that with my father's initials that I cut out of veneer. I made the external stem wide on the top of the deck to accept the initials. This came out very nicely.
2- You can put a small item on the raw wood and build up epoxy around the edges when you seal the wood, prior to glassing. This worked pretty good for me.
3- You can leave the small lip on the edge of the peice and hope for the best. For the keel of the boat, I just used a slighlty thicker king strip, then built up the two adjacent strips with a peice of veneer. This actually gives the bottom of the boat an interesting color feature. However, a small void formed at each edge of the veneer, and trapped air bubbles. Not very attractive, and if was on the top of the boat I would cut out the resultant bubbles and try again. I may just leave it, seeing as how it is on the bottom of the boat. From a few feet away, you can't see the problem - but up close it is pretty obvious. Once again, this is not really an option for a subtle inlay/onlay. It may be OK for larger, less delicate features.

bvs