: Sending again:
: Hi, have got a lot of good tips from everyone here in building an
: Osprey canoe as SOF and now am planning a Bufflehead sailing
: canoe also Yost style. I overbuilt the canoe as the nice wood
: here is close grained Scots pine, clear but heavy and strong and
: i used 20x20mm stringers, and now will reduce the stringers to
: 15x15mm (0.6") fastened to 12 or 15mm 5 ply frames. There
: are 4 stringers + gunwale + keel. I previously used long decking
: screws to fasten the stringers and would like to use them again
: but am concerned that the drill hole would weaken the smaller
: stringer. However Cape Falcon site describe using ring nails to
: fasten 5/8" stringers to ribs building their Adirondack
: canoe. Should I increase the width of the stringers to 18-20mm
: to compensate for the screw holes or lash the stringers using a
: hole drilled from the top to bottom to take the cord to avoid
: bumps in the cloth. I fear lashings would take a long time (48
: of them if I screw the thicker gunwales and keel) and ruin my
: fingers. I thought to also use flexible construction glue with
: fillets as well. What do people think?
: Peter

I don't like the idea of mechanical fasteners for a couple reasons, they do indeed reduce the section area of the stringers and the screws/nails have very poor holding power in edge grain plywood.

Lashing isn't all that hard to do nor really all that time consuming, a groove in the face of the stringer will hide the cord, the drilled hole has the same problem as using a mechanical fastener.

I epoxy them in place, takes a bit longer to let the thickened epoxy set up, but it works and I've not had any failures (in uncoated wood).

Bill H.