Hi Lefty ,

I have not ( yet ) built a skin on frame kayak . Other good books on the
subject are Chris Cunningham's and the newest one I am aware of is
written by Mark Starr which uses a slightly different technique . Mark
teaches kayak building at Mystic Seaport and he uses a more traditional
boat building technique for making the ribs . .I would recommend both of
these other books . Each has something alittle different or additional
supplemental information about the building and use of these types of
craft .

Anyway what I really wanted to do here is recommend that you check out
the Qajaq USA web site and its forum . There you will find plenty of
folks who have built sof kayaks using material from any and all of the
above mentioned books as well as other sources . Many folks there also
build s & g kayaks as well . In fact there is a current thread comparing
the two methods . Two of the best things about sof construction is 1)
about the most toxic thing you'll have to deal with is varnish 2) most
folks say they can build a sof for only about $200 - 400 . So , sign on
to that group and I am certain you will get lots of help and feedback
with any kayak building project .

I also wanted to point out a couple of other web sites concerned with
sof kayaks . But the Qajaq site is the one focused mostly on the
greenland style kayak . The Morris book also has other designs such as
the baidarka and the retrieval kayak amongst other designs . So I
include the other links . From them you can find other sites of interest
as well . Though folks on the Qajaq site also build baidarkas too .

By the way , be sure and download the summer 2003 newsletter "the MASIK
" from the Qajaq home page ( adobe .pdf format ) , great stuff .

This issue of the MASIK also has an article about an east arctic kayak
built by a fellow named Arko . Arko and I camped and paddled together at
a local lake a couple of weekends ago and it is a most interesting
design . Dr. David Zimmerly ( arctickayaks.com ) claims it is his
favorite design . It also has a couple of different articles about
greenland kayaks built using information from the Morris / Cunningham
books . And a short piece about Tom Yost's Symetrik . On the Qajaq forum
site you can find a thread about Tom's Sea Rider design , a design which
has performance comparable to or better than a BBK Valkerie according to
Mark Molina's post . Mark competed in the kayak competion in Greenland
this summer with good result . Tom builds some great boats , though not
of the type described in the Morris book . You can find a link to Toms
other boats from the robroy/baidarka site listed below , buried
somewhere inside the Henrik Maroske link found on the left side of the
web page . Tom apparently is building his own web site yostwerks , but
not to much there yet .

http://www.qajaqusa.org/

http://www.qajaqusa.org/cgi-bin/Gree...orum_config.pl

http://www.rtpnet.org/robroy/baidarka/

http://home.pacifier.com/~qayaq/

http://yostwerks.com/wat.jpg

http://yostwerks.com/symetrikpics.jpg



enjoy ,

David



Lefty wrote:

I borrowed the book .... written by Robert Morris ... I wonder if any
of you
.. would recommend another as an alternative or supplement?

I had thought of building a stitch-and-glue kayak kit .. I'm not sure
I want to do
a lot of fiberglass work anyway.

Comments?