1) Phill was very kind, went out of his way and did a special version of the plans for us. These plans are adapted for strip planking and something ha dont want to spread around widely.
2) Yes, at the time there was a source in Oslo. Would have ment driving down there for 8 hours and back again. Include some ferries, really expensive toll roads, US$2-2.5 pr liter for gas and the base cost of the ply, and it was really expensive. As was having the sheets shipped. Lately we have found another source, just 4 hours away, and we might have some alternative "low cost" shipping trough friends. We did not find this source (dont know if it was operational either) until we was well into cutting stations. Base cost for a 4mm 8x4 sheet of gaboon marine ply is about US$80. If stripping takes too long, we have tought perhaps we could cut some corners by installing ply decks.
3) We are aiming for 5mm x 20mm and 5mm x 25mm strips. Perhaps even wider up by the deck as there is not much shape there. We want to rip them from solid spruce, not fir which is heavier. Ripping from ply would add cost and weight while not really adding strength or stiffness to the boat. We dont plan to bevel cut the strips, but will plane them to fit or use a small dremel tool run along the edges on the strips installed on the mould to get a tight fit.
4)We want to try the skilsaw (thanks for the correct name) becouse a well know kayak designer/builder have warmly reccomended this technique for us. His experience is that it is faster, easier and gives a just as good end result with a skilsaw as if you ran the boards trough a table saw. Ref:
http://www.thomassondesign.com/Default.aspx?culture=en-US and specifically:
http://www.thomassondesign.com/entry.aspx?id=152If this dont work out for us, we have a homebuilders table saw in the garage and access to a professional setup.
We are building in my garage, which is not heated. When begin working with epoxy, we will raise the temperature and start using all the "cold weather" epoxy tricks. Until now the temperature in the garage has been around 5 degrees I would guess.
Molde is on the west coast of Norway. Here is a link to our location on Google Maps, hope it works out:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=e...mp;ll=62.760065,7.000527&spn=13.605276,35.375977&z=5&om=1
We norwegians dont keep our homes cold. We spend a lot of time indoors during winter as there is very little daylight. We went skiing this sunday and enjoyed daylight from 0930 to 1500. With these short days we have quite a lot of electrical lighting in our homes, and keep the living rooms well heated. We have a wood stove in our living room which allows us to stroll around in T-shirts. Bathrooms usually have heated floors and are also well heated and very well lighted. Bedrooms, storage rooms, garages etc. are normally not heated, or heated just for short periods. We dont wear hats and coats in the living rooms <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />
Winter max. low will usually be around 12 to 15 deg C below zero, max 5deg F according to my converter. This weekend we had 6degC below zero. There are quite a lot of tricks to working with epoxy in low temperatures, but we will raise the tempereature in the garage to around 15degC when we start using epoxy.
Civilization continues well below zero degrees. I have some very fond winter tenting memories with double sleeping bags, a parafine stove, candles and girlfriends. It is all about knowlegde, the right minimum gear, a positive attitude and a certain amount of initative/energy. Living in an artic climate is no big deal once you get used to it. But then, the west coast of Norway enjoys artic winters rarely, most often for short periods like a week or two, before we get some respite and rain. I would much prefer to have a stable weather with sub-zero conditions so we could go skiing more often. If you feel like it, there are some photos of sundays small "boatbuilding-community" trip here:
http://www.diversediverse.com/off-piste/
