I am getting closer to the skin-it stage for my project. It most resembles Tom Yost's construction method, but it's my "design". My next steps are to make the coaming and install the floorboards, then it's skinning time!

Long ago and far away I built a skin on frame kayak. I used copper tacks to nail the sail canvas to the frame, doing the hull first and then the deck, overlapped at the sheer. That worked very well, never leaked, and never caused any problems.

I have fabric from Goerge Dyson, and sail needles, but no confidence that I can do a decent jog of sewing the fabric along the deck ridge the way most of the kayaks I see are done. I know others do it, but I'm not good at sewing and I am good at messing stuff up. I am tempted to get monel staples and just, well, staple it, hull then deck, the way I did the first one, long ago and far away.

I imagine it's an abhorent thought to the successful skin seamsters... but the worse picture in my mind is the botched mess I am fully qualified to create.

I've watched online videos, read some books, poured over all the websites that I can find, and still have no confidence that I can sew a kayak cover well enough to pass my own inspection.

If anyone around here has constructive advice please share it. If anyone has done one way and then wished they'd done it the other, please chip in. If anyone has completely botched the sewn cover, how did you proceed?

Thanks for listening,

Michael