After bending in the ribs I clamp the keel and stringers on as soon as possible to smooth out the shape while the ribs are still pliable.
Next I attach the stringers with a continuous lashing of flat artificial sinew (waxed polyester). Continuous lashings and individual lashings were common on historic kayaks and any possible lashing pattern you can imagine is present somewhere on some historic kayak.
Modern skin on frame builders have developed an elaborate mythology surrounding the performance benefits of these ‘native’ tied connections, but the actual historic record tells a different story. Throughout the Arctic we see generous use of nails and pegs for these connections and in fact the museum kayak I am replicating here was originally nailed together!
I use lashings just because they are much faster than nailing and they let me push the stringers around if I notice a wobble in one of the lines when I’m finished. This is especially helpful for the keel, which usually needs quite a bit of adjustment to bring it back to straight by the end of the build.
People often ask if the continuous lashings are vulnerable to breaking which seems like a reasonable concern, but surprisingly that’s never actually happened to me, even with knives, hammers, fishing gear, chainsaws, and piles of Dungeness crabs as frequent companions in the cockpit.
I do protect the sitting area with a mat but other than that I’m not very careful. Even if the worst happens though, because the coating glues the skin to the outside of the gunwales, the lashings are effectively isolated from each other.
I always use flat sinew because the twisted stuff leaves little bumps under the skin that wear through quickly and dramatically shorten the life of the skin. For this build I’m experimenting with a new type of sinew that is twice as strong as what I’ve used in the past. So far I like it so I might be switching the brand we carry.
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