Mark,

Just measure the depth of the spacer before pounding the nails.  For what it's worth, I never used any nails on mine.

FrankP 

This should be considered carefully, is your deck beam in the correct position? is the boat built from a kit? or from plans and the keyhole cutout is in the wrong place.The  front edge of the cockpit is given its strength by the stack of laminates from both the deck beam and the cockpit coaming

if you do not get a clear answer feel free to call

C Fox Boat School

www.cfoxboatschool.com 

Mark,

What Frank said. I didn't use nails either on my wife's 16LT. Just use a bunch of clamps, the glue bond is plenty strong without the nails.

As far as the beam and deck strength, LeeG, one of the old-time builders, makes it a practice to always remove his deck beams completely to save weight, and none of CLC's new boats has a deck beam that I'm aware of. The Wood Duck series has a much wider deck span than the Chesapeake series and it doesn't have a deck beam. Those Chesapeake deck beams are analogous to the removeable formers on the more modern kayaks. So I wouldn't worry about the strength.

C fox, your website link goes only to a bunch of ads, some boat-related. If you're for real, you might want to talk to your ISP. The current setup makes your school look like an old-time spamdexer.

Laszlo

On my Shearwater I clamped the spacers and coaming to the boat without any epoxy to get it exactly where it needed to be, then I drilled 3/16" holes through the coaming, spacers and deck (about 6" spacing depending on the amount of twist) for wood dowels to quickly and exactly locate everything after it's glued up.  On my previous Ches 16 build I found clamping epoxy coated spacers and coaming to be slippery affair.  I did my gluing in 2 steps; first the spacers and then the coaming.  It's alot easier to clean up glue and smooth the outside of the spacers without the coaming in the way.  For the gluing process place dowels in each hole (about 1/4" excess on the each end), apply epoxy to the spacers, fit the spacers onto the dowels, clamp and clean up excess epoxy.  When it's cured then finish the outer edge of the spacers nice and smooth, then glue/clamp on the coaming and cleaning up any excess that squeezed out.  Trim the dowels flush and use a sanding drum on an electric drill to quickly smooth in the inner surface.

   Enjoy, John

Lazlo

Thanks for the input on the website you should try cfoxboatschool.com and see it that way I will get the other fixed tommorrow if you cant get on that way please let me know @ [email protected]

Thanks again 

I came to the same conclusion as John and dowelled the front and back of the coaming on my C16.  On clamping, there was no movement from the mid line of the half coaming sections .  When all was dry I cut the excess off with a pull saw and sanded it down.  It works well, looks good and is easy. The coaming is strong and rigid distributing forces over a large area of the deck. 

Ian