: Hi everyone,

: I'm working on stitching up my Hybrid Night Heron with mixed success. There
: are several glaring issues I was hoping you all could shed some light on.

: First, the side panels near the middle of the boat come up considerably
: higher than they should on the form. Any reason why? Does the form need to
: be moved around? If so, I think it would need to be moved a LOT.

Hi Mike.

You seem to have beveled your planks at the chines and the stems. This may be correct for this particular boat, but if it is not then that may account for your slight overlap at the end.

Normally stitch and glue is just wired without bevels, as in the picture below. This allows one to radius the corners accross the thickness of the planking. If the planks are beveled, when the chines are radiused you will find that you are going to see the fillet unless you have beveled very accurately and keep the radius quite sharp, especially in a single chine boat. Any radiusing is going to show end grain in either case.

From what I gather you are working without detailed plans. If it is your first boat you will be working in the dark. I think it is time to take a couple of days off and wait for the instructions to arrive, before you continue and make a fatal error. This is after all ment to be fun

In the mean time you could be planning your deck design with a bit of web browsing and perhaps building yourself a paddle.

Etienne