Re: Hybrid Deck Consructi

Posted by Jim E on Jan 20, 2007

No responses yet? There aren't many strip or hybid builders on this forum. They mostly hang out at kayakforum.com. I'm not a stripper, but here are my two cents anyway.

As I understand it, you want to prefabricate a pair of 'planks' from short lengths of strip, flat on the bench. In order to get the lateral curve right, you should probably make a dummy plank out of thin ply. Make it wider than needed, lay it on the forms, and mark it for the final cut. This is a common technique for shaping planks on planked boats. The difficulty with a prefabricated plank is that it won't follow the lateral curvature of the form, altough it will bend and twist along it's length to lay on the forms. If it's not too wide, you can plane or sand it down flush to the adjacent planks, but it's only 1/4" thick (or is it 3/16"? pretty thin, anyway) so you dont have much thickness to play with when merging it in. 3" might be too wide.

I think a common way to approach this problem is to create the pattern in situ with quick setting glue. Even hot-melt glue is sometimes used. The argument is that the inter-plank joints dont have to be all that strong, since the glass and epoxy coating on both sides is what holds it all together when finished. Nick Schade uses ordinary yellow PVA glue for planking, with hot-melt for the patterned bits.

Good luck!

In Response to: Hybrid Deck Consruction by Frank on Jan 19, 2007

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