S&G Night Heron – Attaching the Deck to the Hull

I found I couldn’t do this with just tape. The hull and deck needed more force to get the positioning of them together so I ended up wiring them together. This was the second time I did this. I did it first time round when wiring together the deck on top of the hull. I probably should’ve put more effort in then with the stern and it would’ve made life easier for me now.

The stern of the Night Heron has to be squashed together with some force. I’m not the only one that seems to have to do this. In the pictures supplied with Nick’s instructions you can see he has it happen to him and I’ve seen pictures from another builder with the same problem:

http://outdoors.webshots.com/photo/1165926632056308877loLvMK – this builder’s comments mirrored my experience exactly

The bow was easy. The last two feet of the stern were stubborn and took a bit of technique. There I used a paint spatula to force out the hull and then pressed hard and fast on the deck to squish the two beveled edges together for taping. One side of the stern just didnt want to play nice...

Maybe an extra form or two would be useful when creating the stern of the boat?

To help with getting the stern to fit I ended up putting in extra stitches along the rear of the boat. Getting them in at the back is easy as long you use long wires and get them through both holes while the deck and hull are still some distance apart. Then, only after all wires are in do you push the deck down onto the hull and tighten the wires.

I then glued up between the stitches – wish I’d done a cleaner job as I’m still sanding the rough bits up - and then waited a few days to be sure the two pieces wouldn’t crack or pop apart at any point.

With the stitches gone I then put the kayak up on it’s side and taped the inside seam. Notice I cut the hatches before attaching the deck. This made the taping quite easy.

I taped up to maybe 50cms from each end but in retrospect I could have gone further. The secret seemed to be lots of light!

Here’s one bit that went a bit wobbly:)

(Notice all the sanding dust still left inside!)

 

And then I just had to put it into the pool and proved it worked!