> 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.

Hi Paul

Thanks for your thoughts, Sorry about the wood cost thing, Theresa and I are cutting and milling our own strips. I just wanted to make a point on posible cost increases that any plan purchaser could incure do to falty plans. I guess what it comes down to is plans should be fair no matter what type of construction method one uses. Good idea about using cheeper wood for fairing.

Happy paddling

Cheers: Brian