The Gunwales

I cut the Gunwales to length then spent about an hour marking out where ever thing had to go. The mortises for the deck beams had to be positioned as per the drawings. The ribs were 25mm wide with 150mm between each one. The trick was to make sure that the deck beams and the ribs were not at the same position on the Gunwales as this would make them weak.

With all of the marking done it was time to cut out all of the mortises. Eighteen ribs meant 32 mortises. I made a jig for my router to make this a lot easier but it still took about 3 1/2 hours to cut them all, but they came up a treat.

The mortises for the deck beams were a bit tricky the front 3 had to be a 90 degrees to the side of the Gunwales so that was pretty easy but the back three had to be put on an angle to the side. I made the jig described in “Building the Greenland Kayak” and this made them much easier.