> Thanks Ian and Nick for your feedback.

> Other people have answered me on the bulletin board regarding Rob's plans.
> I am vary thankful for their suggestions. Others have talked about there
> experaces building this boat and agreed that the amount of extra work
> needed is silly just because Rob has never stacked the stations on top of
> one another and seen the problem (Rob said he has never stacked the
> station plans on top of one another to check for fairness, as per a phone
> conversation I had with him), and corrected it. So here I site! On one
> hand I am looking at pictures of beautiful boats made by his plans, on the
> other I know that the plan are poorly done. My concusion is that these
> fine boats look so fine, because of there builders skill in shimming and
> fudging around with the lines to make it work out for them. If you get a
> chance to see his plans cheq out what I am talking about! But now it comes
> down to this for me, do I make small changes to fair up his plans and
> build the boat with 50 or so peices/strips of wood ($500.00 Canadian) or
> do what Rob suggests use 20 to 30 peices to fair up the boat, uping our
> wood quanity to 70 to 80 + strips at a aprox cost to us of $800.00
> Canadian (These costs are are as per peice cut and beveled by
> "Noeh's" "for your ark") plus how many hours of wasted
> time? Take a look at the plans, picture them in 3D, and tell me what you
> would do? Sorry I may be coming across strong, but how many more people
> are going to buy Rob's NORTH STAR plans and get a plan that is not up parr
> with what thay should be getting. Your plans Nick are at a completly
> differant level (I have seen your plans from drawing I made of your
> numbers in your book). So are dilemma as boat building enthusiasts is to
> except it or not, I don't! So now I am back to my job of modifying the
> plans or buy new one like your Expadition Guillemot.

> Cheers:Brian

Hi Brian,

$800 is an awful lot of money, perhaps you could think about milling you own strips? You'd save a bunch of $. Or could you use cheap strips of some other type of wood for fairing purposes? Maybe buy a plank of cheap pine and rip it up into strips and fair up your forms with that? Are the strips used for fairing unusable for stripping the boat with? Why?

I recently bought a set of plans for Rob's Georgian Bay kayak, I was thinking of adapting the plans to use Nick's strongback method, but gave it up when I realised that this could just introduce a whole bunch of errors and maybe ruin the boat. I don't particularly like Rob's method, but after building Nick's S&G I've had enough of "thinking on my feet" for a while. I found that building your first boat without a detailed set of instuctions (or in your case, departing from those instructions) is a good way to learn boat building, but you may be unhappy with the results, I was just plain lucky that it turned out right.

So I'll have to agree with Ian and Nick, don't change the instructions. It sounds like half your trouble is trying to save time and a bunch of strips, you really should think about milling your own, it really isn't that difficult and will come out a lot cheaper, you could do it easily in a weekend, it's certainly a lot easier than departing from the instructions.

Good luck and I hope this helps,

Paul.