: Can anyone give me any comments about building the Putz Walrus?

George Putz has a weird way of describing how to get the right shape for the building forms. He describes how to make the tools that you use to draw the arcs that define the shapes that you then have to transfer to the plywood and cut out.

I drew out his forms on my computer a while ago, and translated all the measurements into simple coordinate points that you can plot on graph paper, or you can meaure them directly onto your plywood. Pustz assumes you are placing the forms on the floor and directs you to make large forms. I assume you are working on a bench of some sort -- or that you can bend over a bit. I adjusted the height of the forms so they could fit on a 24 inch wide piece of plywood. This gave me better use of the wood, and saves about $30 in the cost of plywood for the forms.

At the time, I had a van that would not accept a full 4 x8 sheet of plywood, so when I bought plywood for my forms I had the store rip the sheet into two narrower pieces, roughly 2 feet wide and 8 long -- which fit inside the van.

The urls for the coordinate numbers for both boats, which will greatly speed up the process of drawing these forms, can be found in a previous post:

http://www.guillemot-kayaks.com/KBbbsOld/18416.shtml

Mike Hanks has modified the shape of some of his boats by changing the height of the bow. You can do this easily, too, simply by changing the one dimension for that. Read the book and then look at Putz's specifications, and my coordinates, and you'll see how the thing goes together.

hope this helps.

PGJ