I met a professor from Michigan State at a kayak symposium and we were discussing the tortured-plywood decks that Betsie Bay Kayaks have. They are flat with a very curved section over your legs, and the thing that had me intrigued was that they used no shear clamps. There is only a fillet of thickened epoxy in the hull/deck joint. Given the compound bending, the foredeck actually has a bit of a buckle where the deck dipped down in the transition area between the leg-bulge and the flat area. Rumor had it that they pulled a vacuum under an inverted deck, which forced it into shape, and attached a hull to it.

This MSU professor said that his school had an RF chamber where you could put wood, bent and clamped in a fixture of some sort, and it would be bombarded with RF waves. The result was de-stressed wood that held its shape when unclamped.

I'm not sure if this info would help anyone, since even vacuum-bagging is a stretch for the hobbyist. I wonder if my apartment living room could be converted into a high-intensity RF chamber...?

I live about 2 hours from Lansing, so I'm thinking of seeing if this chamber is available for bending a deck for the Sea Kayaker/Chris Cunningham s&g kayak. This professor happened to be building a Guillemot, so he might be interested in helping out. He had a student make flush deck fittings for him out of U's of stainless steel tubing -- they were even flared on the ends for under-deck mounting.

Dean