Ivan,

There should be a series of verticle lines across the drawings (called Stations), these are 12 inches apart and continue across the entire panel (bottom, side or deck).  Below each station are one or two numbers, one atop the other.  The bottom number is the measurement from the baseline (either the horizontal bottom of the plywood or a straight line you scribe the entire length of each piece) to the first "point."  The top number is a measurement that goes above the bottom.  Make a point on each station at each measurement... when you connect all these dots with a long baton, you'll have formed the curves of your panel.  Crystal clear, eh?

 If you need more help, I have a great artcle on building the Night Heron (Stitch-n-Glue), with a description on reading and using the offsets.  Send me your e-mail and I'll send you the document (pretty good info; lots of pics as well). 

Good luck,

Larry

On my current project I used artists' transfer paper. This stuff used to be called carbon paper and could be bought for pennies at any corner store. Now it costs dollars at art and craft stores, but works well. Just slide a sheet between the diagram and the wood and trace the outline with a ball-point pen or hard pencil. One sheet will do the whole boat (you have to keep moving it, of course) and it leaves a nice clean line. You can see photos at my website: http://twofootartist.com/merganser-construction-notes/
-Wes

Thanks a lot, Wes.  You have a nice site with a lot of important notes for those, like me, wishing to build a kayak. I'll try your method to transfer.

Larry. Thanks for the reply. I'll take a look in your method but I'm afraid of not being good enough to draw the curves connecting the points. Your document will be of great help to me. My email is ivan_n_lopez at hotmail dot com. I will be very grateful if you send me it.

Ivan --

As Larry notes, when using a table of offsets, you connect the dots not freehand, but with a long batten.  The batten can be any long straigth material that is fairly stiff but can still be curved.  You set the batten to touch the dots and maintain a fair line (sometimes you have to adjust the dots just a bit to keep the line fair) and hold it in place either with weights or by pinning it to the wood.  I used some cheap, straight-grained lath material.  The nice thing about using a batten is that it just about assures you of having nice, fair curving lines. 

Bear in mind that to use carbon paper, you have to start with full-sized plans. Either that, or you have to scale the plans up.  I don't know about the Night Heron, but the Chesapeake series and Mill Creek series plans with which I'm familiar are scaled down.  In any case, if you go the carbon paper route, I'd think there could be a possibility of kinking your lines, and you'll still need to do something to insure that the lines are fair.

  -- Jim

Keep in mind that it is generally illegal and/or immoral to build more than one boat from a set of plans.  The exception to this is when you pay an additional royalty to the person/company that sold you you the plans.  

I just believed I bought templates from CLC but I never heard about single use. Obviously, I understand that are for personal use only.

Please accept my apologies if "single use" is a rule I missed. I´m a hobbist, I'm not trying to do business with this. I just wanted preserve plans in case my son (7 years old) becomes kayaker.

Again, please accept my apologies.

Ivan

 Yes on the rule that purchasing a kit or plans is only for one build.  I saved all my plans and manuals. In case I want to build another I am assuming paying the royalty is not as much as buying plans again which would include the royalty.  Least abuse on the plans is to tape the lines where they would be marked, with an awl,  and then connect the dots. 

Kim

If I remember correctly (I'm, ahem, at work right now, and my plan set is at home) the royalty fee for a hobbyist building a second boat is pretty nominal, $10 I think.  Just enough to protect CLC's interest against pirated copies without discouraging true hobbyists such as yourself.

Jim:

That cost sounds rasonable. Otherwise, for me, plans costs u$s 215, nearly twice what they cost there, because shipping and customs payments.  That is the reason for preserve plans.

In resume, I´ll try preserve plans and I´ll pay the royalty fee when I build another S&G Night Heron. I really hope my son becomes kayaker and I it force to me to build another one.

Thanks a lot to everyone.

Ivan

I am almost done my S&G Night Heron. Perhaps there are some useful ideas somewhere in them. Hope this helps. That said, the S&G NH is a fantastic kayak...has become my favorite out of the 5 I have built.

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/14373615@N03/sets/72157608891639432/

Robert N Pruden

Robert, thanks for the link to your photo journal.  How much weight do you estimate that was saved by using the closed cell foam in the 'end pours'?  Does it give the same amount of strength and stifness in the ends? - Ron

Your work is amazing. Thank a lot for share it with us. You have a lot of useful ideas there. I want to ask something about them with you if you haven´t any problem. For example:

- You don´t do scarf joints: Your method for joint is easier but...is it strong enough?.

- You don´t use temporary forms. You armed hull and deck together, glued de seams from outside and then separate them. Does that method permit align parts correct and easily?

Best Regards.

Ivan

Ron, weight savings are only a few ounces but every little bit helps. I wanted to build this kayak as lightly as possible to try to keep it at or below 30-lbs. I believe I succeeded. I can easily pick up the kayak and carry it with one hand. The ends are easily stiff enough without an end pour because of the outside glass and the tapes I installed along the inside seams. Remember that once the deck is installed, it stablizes and adds structural strength to stern and bow. Instead of glassing the entire inside of the hull I used only 2" 6-oz fibreglass tapes to strengthen all seams. The deck has one 4-oz glass layer and the hull exterior has one layer of 6-oz glass.

 Ivan, there are no scarf joints because I have found that a tightly joined butt-joint is strong enough. I have built 5 kayaks so far and have never had a butt-joint related failure. With glass on both sides of a butt-joint, you have just as much strength as you will ever need. Remember that as you build your kayak, each seam that is reinforced with thickened epoxy and glass strengthens the rest of the kayak. All seams were taped and glued on the inside and glassed on the outside.  I did not use thickened epoxy to reinforce the seams on this kayak because I wanted it to be very light weight. I did use the temporary forms that Nick provides in his plans. They were removed once the hull and deck were separated after being tied and glued.

For this kayak, I wired the hull and deck together prior to gluing. This allowed me to build both the hull and the deck much more quickly than in the past. I was careful not to add glue where the temporary forms were installed. Once the gluing was completed, I separated the deck from the hull and started preparations for glassing. That included filling all spaces between panels with thickened epoxy, taping all inside seams, smoothing everything, then glassing the outside of the hull first, then fairing the hull, then reattaching the deck and preparing it for the final wrap of 40-oz glass to secure it to the hull.

 Hope this helps.

 Robert N Pruden

Oh yes, I forgot to mention. If you want to save the plans for another use later on, Nick will accept something like $20-$50 to renew your licence to use the plans again. This means that you should send him an email and ask him how much $$$ he wants to allow you to build another kayak from the same plans. Of course, such thinking is based on good faith. It's like computer software: you buy the software only for one computer unless the licence allows the software to be installed on mroe than one computer. Hope this helps you understand how the system works.

 Robert N Pruden

Robert,

Great info on the butt joints.  I used a 45 degree cut on my side panels (vice a long scarf joint) glued with thickened epoxy and with glass on the inside surface; I used butt joints on my bottom panels, also with interior glass, except for the end-bits - 6" pieces glued on to give me 16.5 feet of length... there I put glass on both sides to (hopefully) withstand the twisting the bottom will take as I curve it up to meet the sides.  I take it you've had good luck with this type of joinery?  I'm nervous about whether the joints will hold until I get to the exterior hull glassed, locking everything in place!?!  I also plan to glue a strip of 4mm plywood across the middle of each inner seam for added security, after the hull's wired up and epoxied/filleted. 

Any other suggestions for making these joints bullet-proof?  When I pulled my cuttoff/scrap pieces away from the bottom and sides, all the joints cracked (on the opposite side of the glassed joint).  That's why I added glass to both sides of the bottom panels; figured the "sandwich" would create enough surface area to prevent over-bending in either direction.

 Thanks for the info; your boat looks great!

Larry

Robert N(novator) Pruden, thanks for the replies!

Robert:

Thanks for your reply. It´s very useful. You have taken good and descriptive photos and your comments helps a lot. I´ll try some of your advices. I hope you let me ask you any questions about NH in nearly future .

I understood how the system works.

Thanks a lot. Best regards.

Ivan

You can get bullet proof joints by using 4-oz glass on both sides of the joints if you don't want to take the risk of breaking a joint. I have broken them in the past so no one would poo poo this idea if it works for you. Ideally, you want to tape them on the inside so that your glass work on the outside looks perfectly flat. That said, if you sand the taped joints smooth, you won't notice the difference at all. I think using 6-oz glass on the outside of the panels would be a wee bit too much so try to use 4-oz glass, even lighter if you can get it.

Larry, don't bother gluing wood strips on the seams, that is wasted effort and will only add more weight to your kayak. You need only use a thin bead of thickened epoxy and either glass the inside of the hull or use fibreglass tape, ideally 6-oz, to get fantastic strength to your seams. I did not bother to use thickened epoxy on my seams and have good strength and wonderful stiffness along the length of the hull. I wanted my build to be light so I took certain liberties that only an experienced kayaker knows about. Do not worry about the strength of your kayak: it will be strong with properly glassed/taped seams. Extra epoxy only adds weight. The epoxy doesn't add more strength with more used: it adds only weight and increased costs. The real strength comes from the fibreglass, be it tapes or glass cloth.

I'm about to start building my WD14. Just waiting on the sheets of wood to arrive.

I found a site that has 4x8 sheets of carbon paper for $10. I plan on placing the carbon between the plans and the wood and using a few thumb tacks to keep it from shifting. I bought a "Tracing wheel" from a fabric store for $2 (Looks like a spur) instead of using a pencil. I tried it out on a small piece and works pretty well and very fast. Plus it doesn't damage the plans if I want to use it again.

Wish me luck.

http://www.woodworkersworkshop.com/store/index.php?app=ccp0&ns=prodshow&ref=19_2066&sid=w35zwvye1vmm566w1070t966y8nu23p1