The final run in..

I've been fairly busy recently, but have managed to complete the last major step in building a cedar strip kayak; joining the deck and the hull. It's good to see the boat in one piece at last.

I've also made the seat from Minicell foam, and finished the carbon fibre coaming, and fitted the Karitek skeg box.

Internal view of skeg box

Carbon fibre hatch rim detail. The hatches are the same size as on my Valley Aquanaut.

View of the inside of the hull to the bow... the black circles are carbon fibre patches to reinforce the bottom of the deck fittings

And along to the stern.

The pieces of wood were necessary to force the hull outwards to meet the deck whilst the epoxy set. You can see the double layer to reinforce under the seat and the internal keel strip.

The inside of the hull is a bit scabby, so I'll probably paint it.

The boat needed a roll and a half of nylon reinforced tape to keep the two halves together...

[and it's a pig to get off too].

I attached the fibreglass tape with wee dots of hot melt glue to keep it in place.

I used 2" tape on the outside. By trimming along the line of the masking tape when the resin has just gone 'green', a very neat seam is created, without the woven edge of the tape showing.

The hardest and most unpleasant bit was getting the resin along the tape on the inside, but didn't take as long as I thought it would. I rolled a length of pre soaked 1" tape on top of it for extra strength.

Joined at last !