The next day with the joints taped and set inside I continued by fitting the decks and centre thwart.
The decks supplied with the kit are simply triangular pieces of ply and are fitted over the supports I put on earlier and over another small triangular piece of ply that goes at the thin end. These small pieces of ply required a bit of planing to get them to fit properly and then were glued and screwed in place.
Whilst I waited for the glue to set I gave the centre thwart a clean up with the belt sander.
Then I chiselled the recesses of the seat supports to size and cleaned them up. The Thwart was then fitted followed by the seat supports.
The decks could now be fitted on top of their supports. They are supplied a little over size to allow for trimming.
The straight edges were planed flush once the glue had set and the curved edge was sanded with a flapwheel.
These decks are perfectly adequate but I always like to add a bit of contrasting timber in my work to make it more interesting so I decided to put some stripes on the top of the decks.
This is done in stages using offcuts from one of my strip canoes. The pieces are cut to size and glued on top of the ply.
The pieces are put on in stages a few at a time and I work on alternate ends letting the glue set one one whilst working on the other.
At times the clamping has to be a bit creative because the decks are slightly concave.
The edges will be trimmed when the glue has fully set next day so that is where I shall leave it for now.
Thanks for reading.
Cheers
Alick