Adding the deck

I am building a kayak, not a canoe. So the deck has to go on now. Trying to save on PVC I decided to use two 2.5 meter pieces for the deck. They will be joined just in front of the cockpit:
A first look of the boat with the yellow cover:

Trimming the deck requires some courage. It is a lot of material, so you do not want to make a mess of it. Using lots of tape it starts to look like a real kayak now:
Leaving a few mm open the edge of the deck is lined with tape. The tape is used to mask the gluing area and to avoid runoffs of the glue:
And in detail:

After this the glue is applied and the deck is taped in place with a LOT of tape. With less tape is is difficult to avoid wrinkles.
Working from the middle to the ends the heat gun is used to bond hull and deck together. Be carefull to minimise the amount of wrinkles at the hull-deck joint. The result:
And in detail:
Now the ends are still wide open. First I will close them crudely, afterwards they will get a proper and nice cover. As is is difficult to apply pressure when bonding without a frame or sponson, I filled the ends with foam or the like. The stern:
And the bow:

Now I close the ends as good as I can do it, but is is difficult to make them look nice. Some small cuts are required tro avoid big wrinkles. After this the stern looks like this:
Again the stern:
And the bow:
I agree, it does not look to well. But come back for next blog, and you will be surprised with the final result.

Getting the hull in shape

With the hull on the table and the sponsons inserted the moment has come to shape the hull. Inflating the sponsons and adding tape quickly brings the shape. Make sure you have the ends clamped really well, otherwise the keel tube jumps out of the ends.

The clamped bow:

Here the small modellers clamp is in place. I made the hull a bit short, so I have not a lot of material left. Next time a bit longer would be better.

With the tape in place the hull looks nice:

And from the other side:

Due to the single piece hull I ended up with some severe wrinkles:

There is just to much material at the deck line, and it goes into three big wrinkles on both sides of the hull. Here the sewn sleeves approach is a disadvantage. The hull already is glued to the sleeves, so I can not just cut the hull and patch it as Tom does on his PVC sleeve version. I have to work loose the sleeve from the skin at the position of the wrinkles to be able to cut the skin. Luckily this goes rather well with enough heat from the heatgun:

After cutting I first glue the skin back in place, then patch the area.
With patch waiting:

And the result:

Next the paper tape has to be replaced by PVC strips. Originally I wanted to go without this step and just use the tape (paper or duct tape) to keep the hull in shape. Regretfully none of the tape I tried could hold the load for an hour or more. As I did not want to have a hull loosing shape while mounting the deck I resorted to the tried PVC strips.

Cutting the strips to length:

The hull with the strips waiting to be glued:

And here one of the strips at its final position:

After this the hull is ready for the deck.

Blog delay

The blog has a a lot of delay, and the boat a little. I planned to have the boat ready for my trip to Australia in june, but despite the effort it was not to be. I spend the time I had on the boat, so the blog is way behind now. Actually, the boat is ready and will be launched wednesday 21 juli!

Next days I will try to get rid of the difference between the blog and the boat.