Boat Building Forum

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Strip: Form alignment & internal strongback
By:Chris Sperry
Date: 10/25/2008, 9:36 am

I am in the middle of stripping the deck of my Guillemot, and yesterday was surprised by the lack of alignment of forms 3 and 4 near the bow. My internal strongback is a box beam, and the hull came out fair. But as the deck progressed, I noticed that forms 3 and 4 were creating a slight rise in the strips. This caused some difficulty in twisting the deck strips into alignment where they terminate. All of my deck strips to this point are running parallel to the keel.

I pulled all the staples out of forms 3 and 4, and moved them back until the deck strips looked fair again. Since I am nearly finished stapling strips to forms 3 and 4, I am able to continue stripping with just a small amount of extra effort.

Although I aligned my forms with care, this small alignment problem slipped by me. The next time I will attach some sacrificial strips to the hull and to the deck to sight along for alignment.

Any other comments or suggestions are welcome.

Thanks - Chris