Re: Butt or scarf?

Posted by LeeG on Oct 3, 2005

It would make a bulge,,strips of cloth will make less of a bulge than tape and you can put more on the inside than the outside.

I bet this is splitting hairs but I know of a few kayaks/canoes where what worked in one application didn't work too well in another and it was customers using the craft as designed who found out what the designer didn't intend.

If there's 6oz glass over both sides I bet it's not a problem. It's amazing what happens with the same payload when a hull shape widens out using the same thickness of wood.

For example maybe the hull at 27" width wouldn't flex that much,,but if it was a smidge longer and a smidge wider the smidges compound into enough of a stress that more glass, ribs, or thicker wood become worthwhile.

I don't mean to make you worry, it just that I saw the Sassafras14 in 6mm with unglass joints go to 4mm with unglassed joints and it flexed so much that the joints cracked. Likewise Wilderness Systems introduced a new kayak in glass,the CapeHorn17,and did the same with kevlar but kevlar is inherently more flexible and it resulted in VERY easy gel coat fractures where it didn't before in glass. This is something I've seen in various forms when new production kayaks are introduced,,a design element continued from a prior model, or a new design is tossed in with little testing leaving the customer to see how good the manufacturer follows up. So if you're deviating from plans,,and it's not from experience it would be worth hearing out it turns out. A lot of first time builders, not me of course, have experimented from the first construction on,,and learned a lot.

In Response to: Re: Butt or scarf? by John Short on Oct 3, 2005

Replies:

• Re: Butt or scarf? by Pete on Oct 3, 2005
  • Re: Butt or scarf? by LeeG on Oct 3, 2005
  • Re: Butt or scarf? by Mark Camp on Oct 3, 2005
    • Re: Butt or scarf? by RogerJ on Oct 7, 2005