sorry, hit return before I wanted to post, I am stitching together my first clc 17, At the bow of the boat I have a small bit of what looks to be mis-alignment. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_aXY8t4JX1tE/TaJehzKQoXI/AAAAAAAAABQ/M5ZT8cKD43U/s912/DSC_0040.JPG Should I back out and re-align the panels? or is this no big deal and keep going? I have about 3/4 of the boat stitched, but nothing is glued yet. Everything else appears to be aligned, puzzlejoints matching up, etc. - Ken.

Lets try this again with scripts turned on.

and one picture from the side with a ruler for scale

Depends if you are painting it or not.  If you are painting it and you have lots of time to fill, sand, fill, sand, fill, sand, then you can leave it.  If you are not going to paint it and will be glassing/epoxy it to leave it clear I would realign them.

Actually, even if you are painting it and after doing the fill/sand/fill/sand step before, take 20 minutes to realign it to save yourself a few hours of sanding and filling....

However, I am wondering why you didn't chamfer the panels so the edges lined up? Maybe it's not in the 17' manual, but it was in the woodduck.  By chamfering the edges you will actually get a 100% alignment on the tips (imagine a "V", not a flat box as you have) that makes your edges. This also allows for the fillets you would need on the outside to round the corners be non-existent. Again if you are paining the bottom no big deal but if you are not then the bottom edge will either be flat, or if you do round them it will show the wooden core of the plywood.

You can check out my (very slow) build progress here: http://logicalphilosopher.blogspot.com/search/label/kayak

 Note on this picture you can see the edges are sharp that line up (ok not too sharp once I stiched them together): http://www.flickr.com/photos/cowans/5348345858/in/photostream/

I am in the sanding phase now and 95% of the sanding is fixing the 6 spots where my panels mated together and it did not line up.  I've probably spend 2-3 hours just on one spot to get it filled, sanded, filled, sanded, etc, so it is smooth enough that you can't tell when you run your hand across it. In doing so it doesn't look that pretty and couldn't be glassed and left. A little time spent here will save lots in the long run.

 pete

PS: One thing I found useful after trying to stitch it together 2 or 3 times was to start at the bow and stern and get them lined up then work your way to the middle. There seems to be more give/flex in the middle to get things pulled in whereas on the bow and stern it wasn't very much.

In my opinion I would not worry about realigning them.  I would take my block plane and trim off the excess on the bottom panels. I do not think that little bit, just an 1/8 inch, with throw anything off.  Is this a kit or did you cut out your panels?  If you cut them out it may be due to your measurments when laying out the panels. If its a kit, they just might be shifted slightly which is truely miniscuel. If the hull looks straight and fair I would not think twice about trimming it down.  Do you have a block plane to shave it down??

Thanks for the input and advice folks.

I do have a block plane, and I have decided to trim it up and fill in with epoxy as needed.

I am planning to paint the bottom of the boat.

Here is another picture of the progress so far.

I have worked out the twist, and am preparing to install the bulkheads.

Thanks,

Ken.

Here are a few progress pictures.

I glassed the inside this past weekend. and started working on fixing the front of the boat.

So far, applying the fiberglass was the biggest challenge.

I had a bit of a time with the glass stranding out on me for the 6 oz cockpit section.

 Its a fun challenge so far!

Ken.