Boat Building Forum

Find advice on all aspects of building your own kayak, canoe or any lightweight boats

Building my coaming *Pic*
By:John Monfoe
Date: 7/15/2001, 4:11 am

This is the way I am building my fast coaming so I can get on to my varnishing. It is somewhat like Spidey's except it doesn't have the conning tower to put the lower lip radius on and it doesn't come off for finishing before it is epoxied back into place like Spidey's. So the foam will have to be torn out of the lip area after it is fiberglassed. I used 5/8 fine grained styrofoam to fit around the cockpit. It will be prepaired with shellac and paste wax for seperation. Then the bottom tape covering the 1/4" strip edges while I am preping will be taken off and that edge will be part of the epoxied area that holds the coaming on. But since that is not nearly enough to hold it I am wraping the cloth back under the deck 1". I have cut 1 3/4 wide glass tape into 4" length with a strip of duck tape on each end. 200 of them, which will go around the deck 4 time, being overlapped. I will tape the strips of glass to the under deck and the top foam to hold them tightly in place and around the sharp under deck bend so the glass tape doesn't spring up while being epoxied. Then I will probably put on one layer of bias cut glass on top of it all. If I think I need the bottom lip radius for extra strength I may use Rob Macks method of squshing a plastic tube against thicken epoxy to make the bottom lip radius. When the glass is all set up, I will take my router and cut the glass at the black line on the foam and dress everything up. I would like to mix some coloring into the last epoxy coat like Spidey did. Hope it all works.

John