One interesting thing about skin on frame boat building that’s completely different than almost every other type of woodworking is that it’s actually beneficial to do sloppy work. This makes it both faster and more beginner friendly.
In normal boat or furniture building, sloppy joints allow for a bit of flexing that slowly becomes a lot of flexing and eventually causes damage and failure.
In a skin boat on the other hand a bit of flexing is unavoidable because of the tremendous forces of the boat moving over waves. In this case a slightly loose joint helps to dissipate forces that would otherwise lead to damage in perfectly tight joints. This is another reason we don’t glue anything.
Here I’m burning through the rib mortises for a kayak with a plunge router. There’s probably an eighth of an inch of variation in mortise length. No worries!
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