Boat Building Forum

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The incredible shrinking hull!
By:Paul Woolson
Date: 8/25/1999, 5:36 pm

Well, I had a problem that many others have posted about. When joining the hull and deck of my 10' boat, the hull had gotten much narrower. This happened to my Guillemot too but I was able to squeeze out the deformities. Not so much as a bucge here. I had it on it's side and was sitting on it (like closing an over stuffed suitcase) to get it to fit, but no luck. I tried spreading the hull with a board but without fail, as soon as I was bearing down on the tape, it would slip out. So that didn't work. There had to be a logical way to squeeze the deck but my clamps weren't deep enough to fit over the rise in it. Here's what I did. (After battling with this for hours and hours) took the deck off, with it upside-down the clamps would fit. I measured the width at the center of the hull and then squeezed the deck to that width. When this was achieved, I used strapping tape to hold it so the clamp could be removed. This continued up and down the deck until the underside was covered with strips of tape. I put it on the hull and wrapped the stern and bow pieces. then wrapped between the first two pieces of tape. With this piece holding the width in place the strips could be removed and slid out of the crack between the deck and hull. Finished product worked out very well and only took about an hour to afix the two parts. Hope this helps someone in the future. Paul