Boat Building Forum

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

Re: S&G: fillets and strength
By:LeeG
Date: 6/8/2009, 12:12 am
In Response To: Re: S&G: fillets and strength (John Faas)

: Lee,I will review the instructions and post them, hope the designer does not
: mind too much. He has some pretty neat ideas. CLC says this boat is way up
: there in the S & G world of kit building. The instructions are
: amazing--somethinglike 400 pages!! 4 to 5 pictures on most pages.
: \thanks for the thoughts

I worked at CLC when it was being built. I believe it was their first in-house exposure to a non-CLC construction. The manual was a marvel to behold and Jay Hockenberry did a great job on the first construction. He buffed out the gloss varnish and gave it a neat flat finish.

Does the manual say to put down two layers of tape in the forward/aft chine joints or just one? I could never understand why he instructed such a labor intensive method for making a butt joint when a block of 4mm ply would work just as well.

Anywho just to confuse the issue I've seen s&g kayaks with NO fillets between the side and bottom panels and just glass cloth and any damage I saw to those boats was in the center of the glassed panels where it could flex most.

If I was making it and there was no extra layers of cloth in the cockpit bridging from chine joint to keel to chine joint and the interior panels were already pre-glass I'd just make minimal fillets about 3/4" wide and put a strip of 6oz cloth about 2" wide over it. Then when it partially cures scrape the edges and put another fill coat over all of it. Along the center seam you could do the same. All of this might save you 8oz.

Messages In This Thread

S&G: fillets and strength
John Faas -- 6/6/2009, 10:25 pm
Re: S&G: fillets and strength
LeeG -- 6/7/2009, 9:27 pm
Re: S&G: fillets and strength
John Faas -- 6/7/2009, 11:09 pm
Re: S&G: fillets and strength
LeeG -- 6/8/2009, 12:12 am
Re: S&G: fillets and strength *LINK*
Phil Nelson -- 6/7/2009, 9:19 pm
cool
LeeG -- 6/7/2009, 9:37 pm
Re: cool
Phil Nelson -- 6/8/2009, 4:52 am
Re: cool
JEM -- 6/8/2009, 9:42 am
Re: cool
Phil Nelson -- 6/8/2009, 8:17 pm