I think I’m going to start offering just the skinning portion of my kayak building course separately so people aren’t building one of my kayaks can still take advantage of our skinning and coating techniques. It’s not exactly rocket science, but there’s a zillion little things that can go wrong and ruin the finished boat. A few examples:
There are dozens of available fabric choices but only a few of them will shrink tight and stay tight, some you need to sew on soaking wet, others will actually crush the frame if you sew them wet. Some fabrics will stretch around certain compound curves and others won’t. Different fabrics are compatible with different coating and coloring systems, which might not be obvious when you first finish your boat but can end up being the difference between a skin that lasts 2 years and one that lasts 10 years. You can iron wet nylon to tighten the deck but never dry nylon and never the hull of any lashed kayak. Heck, just last year I finally figured out why most Greenland kayaks have stubborn wrinkles on one side of the bow only and fixed the issue!
My skinning system is designed mostly for speed and tightness. I start by adding temporary stanchions under deck beams that I can easily reach to prevent hull collapse during the skinning and coating process, then I stretch the cloth longitudinally by sewing it short. Then I cut the fabric to the exact width it needs to be and tighten horizontally with a lacing. After that it’s just a simple whipstitch from the ends to the cockpit, strap the coaming down, cut out the circle and lace it on. Then, if I’m not working with a cloth that needs to be sewn wet, I wet it down, and iron the places that are safe to iron.
The whole process takes me about 4 hours, although if you prefer the look of a different type of stitching you can certainly stretch that an extra four or five hours with cross stitching or flat stitching. I personally prefer the look of flat stitching on a Greenland boat, I just I don’t have the time to do it on my own boats!
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