Skinning and coating!

as you've noticed by now, i don't own my own camera... so unfortunately no pictures of this important and exciting part of the build :<
i will upload pictures when i go out during this week though.

i went out saturday morning, and went to the boat shop, and spoke to the guy there, he figured normal boat varnish should do it, he wasn't sure it would stick to the cloth, but i'm feeling positive. :P
i got one can that's supposed to last something like 14-15 square meters.

i started putting the skin on around 3pm.

at 9 i had stiched up the middle, and twice around the coaming.

i went up the next morning and spent an hour stiching all along the middle seam once more to reinforce it and around the coaming once more (doing the coaming with the dental floss too because i don't have a needle big enough for my lashing thread).

for the stretching, i made a pocket in one end, and pulled all i could on the other end, and marked how far it went, made another pocket there, and pulled it over the end, then i streched it sideways by sewing a large zig-zag pattern and tightening it a couple of times.

then i streched a thread of my lashing material from one end to the other and back, so i had two threads, i cut off the cloth about 5cm past the middle line, and then tucked the cloth in between the lines, and then i started sowing in one end, under the lines, to the masik, and then doing the same from the back end to the back rest.

i didn't have any nails to strech he coaming with, so it's not quite as tight as it could be, but i'd say it's tight enough.

and then i started applying the varnish, using a wide brush, i started with the seams and coaming, applying as much as i could, then did thetop side, and when i flipped it over i realised i'd used half the can of varnish... so in the end, when i ran out of varnish i still hadn't coated the sides, from the chines up to the gunwhales, and the shop i bought the varnish in isn't open on sundays.

luckily the other shop in town was open, so i bought a can of varnish there, though it's a different brand, and likely a different type, but nothing i can do about it, so i just painted it on the last bits, overlapping with the first varnish a bit, and i hope it will work out well.

so hopefully i can trade a couple of evening shifts this week to some earlier shifts so i can go out and put two more coats of varnish on it, and if all goes well i'm hoping to go for a paddle on saturday! :D