Just another couple photos of how I flattened the kayak that was a bit too round on the bottom yesterday. Note that I’m not clamping to the deck beams here I’m clamping to sawhorses and cross braces. The kayak started 9 inches deep at the back of the cockpit, I clamped it down to 8 1/2 inches, covered the boat in blankets, steamed for 30 minutes, and then let it cool for a half hour. It’s sprung back to 8 3/4 and the pressure of the skin should bring down to 8 1/2.
It’s not an ideal fix but that quarter inch is going to make a big difference in stability.
The reason this happened is because the builder didn’t clamp the stringers on the same day as bending the ribs. This is a critical step because not only does it help to smooth out any imperfections in the rib shaping, it also strangely exerts outward pressure on the ribs which slowly pulls the keel line down in the center. I say this at the beginning and the end of the steam bending videos.
Resteaming an entire boat is something I’ve done a few times to deal with asymmetry in canoes and this is the first time I used it to flatten the keel line a kayak, seems to work pretty well.
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