Most boat builders, particularly those building strip canoes, reach a point when they add the last strip of wood in the hull of the vessel. The North Americans all seem to reach for the "whisky" bottle as they place the last piece into the hull. Of course, it's not actual Scottish whisky but some look-alike. With salt in my veins, I reach for the bottle of rum – Australian Bundaberg – and toast the last plank. BUT with a kayak, one is not finished at this point because you still have to strip plank the deck – both fore and aft deck around the cockpit. So no rum at this stage. It can age for a few more weeks.
The turning of the hull, especially with an internal strongback, is a major operation – not only because of the weight but also because one needs to have a cradle to place the hull on so you can work on the deck. I had cut two cradles from the shape of the forms before I put them on the strongback and covered them with foam, so the turning was an easy operation.
While cutting and machining the strips, I had selected a few for the side deck and for the fore and aft deck, so it was just a question of taking them down from the rack in the roof and selecting the strips for the side up from the part line.
The part line is the widest part of the kayak, and the hull strip is not glued to the adjacent deck strip. This way, when the deck is finished, one can just lift the hull from the deck and the two parts can be worked on individually. I used the hot glue gun method rather than the staple method to keep the strips attached to the forms and to take on the shape of the hull. Before starting on the deck, I removed the middle form wedge and knocked the forms off the strips where they were attached to the wooden strips. You start at the middle and knock the form toward the wide part of the kayak. It sounds scary that the strips will spring off the kayak and jump out of shape from the forms, but the hot glue drops come away from the masking tape on the forms surprisingly easily. Work your way from the centre towards the bow and then work your way to the stern. With all the forms loose, it's time to put the spacers back in place between the forms and to insert the wedges in the middle space – in my case between the two form 8s.
Now the important part: the strip which runs from bow to stern along the part line of the hull was the next task. Not too difficult. Do both sides and hot glue onto the forms, but glue to the stem and stern piece. The second strip is the important one because it is glued to the first and hot glued to the form plus real glue to stem and stern.
As one strips up the side of the deck, the curve on the solo microbootlegger gets greater and greater. I think Nick Schade originally designed this vessel to be 18 feet long and then reduced the distance between the forms from 12 inches to 10 inches to reduce the length of the kayak. The twists and turns on this hull's strips are difficult to follow. I needed to use the heat gun at the bow and stern to get the strips to twist onto the end pieces. It required lots of clamps and multiple sessions with the glue gun.
I had decided early on in the build that I did not like the hard chines as the hull came up to the deck, so I smoothed the hard corner to a more rounded shape. This looked good on the forms but added a lot more work in bevelling the edges of the strips to match each other around the curves. This is not a requirement in cove and bead strip planking. The rabbet plane I had purchased at an online auction at the start of the year – well sharpened and correctly adjusted – made the task easy but long-winded. You start at the lower – fixed strip and plane off the edge at the angle of the form to match where the next strip will go. Then continue planing around a form till each wood shave is full width and at the right angle. Back and forth between forms with a test strip to check the gap between the two adjacent strips. Next, move to the next form and continue the correct angle. On a section of the hull that is reasonably straight, like in the middle, that sounds easy, but wait till you get to the complex curves near the bow and stern when you have the strip curving towards the ends, twisting from vertical to almost horizontal, and you have a real challenge. Remember, in this project, "near enough is not good enough." Each strip has to match its neighbour without the slightest gap.
At some point, one moves from strip planking the sides of the kayak to covering the deck. In this design, that is the chine, but as stated above, I had rounded the forms to try to eliminate this transition point as a smooth curve. I reached that point but noticed as I progressed, the deck part line strips were moving away from the hull part line strip. This, I understand, is not an unusual occurrence because the hot glue spots of the hull no longer hold these strips to the form. The solution is quite simple: hot glue a short strip to the top hull strip at right angles to the strip, then glue a further short strip to the bottom strip of the deck. The two match each other but are attached to opposing strips and thus work against each other to keep the two non-glued strips together.
The aft deck seemed like the next step to tackle. It is relatively flat, and I had selected some good-looking strips to make a feature of this section. There are many designs that one can use in planking the deck of these kayaks. Because I have a very plain, ordinary wood – Myrtle – there are no intricate designs I could use, but the layout of the planks has four basic designs. I chose a highlight central strip and then arranged the planks to be laid parallel to this line as they move out to the side of the side deck. There are some intricate joins as one moves from the stern forward with the strips getting shorter and shorter, but no difficult curves to contend with.
The aft deck planking had to wait as I took a break to return to the coast to do some maintenance on the house. It was a good break away from construction. I took the time to design the cockpit. The micro Bootlegger has a large cockpit with wide sides which I did not like. There is nothing to place your knees against, and the size would make the kayak vulnerable to being swamped. I took another cockpit design and drew it on a large sheet of paper, but that design was too small. So I measured the size of my backside and the distance to my knees and the comfortable width, and free-handed the new cockpit design. On paper, it looked good and a reasonable size. 
Stripping the aft port deck
Next will come the cockpit recess, which is the transition from the deck to the cockpit coaming. There are many ways to do this, so off to watch a few YouTube videos and Facebook posts to get some ideas. That will have to wait till I finish stripping the deck, although I have now decided the size of the cockpit hole.
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