Your whittling skins with a bushcraft knife are superb Stuw - well done...............only another five to go
I used a very thin super-glue to bond my strakes directly onto the sanded bottom skin. I bought mine from Richard at King Cobra Racing (01706 250007) and it is the type that they developed and use to hold the tyres onto the wheels of large scale racing cars, so it has to be super-strong to handle the brutal power that is put through them as well as the twisting stress that the tyres take during cornering, braking, and acceleration - all done very quickly and with a very fast heavy weight racing car.
This superglue is very thin and so it can wick (creep) into the fibres of the wood and provide a very strong bond. Its development also included the requirement to have a small amount of "flex" to add to its strength and durability. Most super-glues are quite brittle when dry and would not work as well when holding a racing tyre onto a rim as the flexing pressures would cause it to crack.
This tiny amount of "flex" is imperceptible but I am thinking that it could be an advantage for a job like this.
The glue also dries very quickly so I found it ideal for gluing the strakes on as I could work my way along them and hold the curvature in place - dab it with the super-glue - hold it in place for a few seconds and then move on the the next small section etc.
By starting at the front after shaping the end of the strake to fit against the inside edge of the bottom chine rail (at this stage the strake was being held upwards like an old type of semaphore car indicator) a small dab of the glue fixed it quickly in place against the skin and the chine rail.
Once this was fixed I was able to push the strake firmly against the skin and hold the next inch or so in the curvature needed as another dab of glue was applied to hold this next section in position.
By slowly working around the curvature at the bows I found it even easier to form the strakes shape than I had perviously done with steaming or soaking when using other methods. I think it works so well because each very small part of the curved section is secured firmly in position and instead of cracking and snapping some of the strakes I had no failures at all.
Once the front curved section of the strakes were fixed in place (the hardest part) I held a steel straight edge against the remaining straight length (the easiest part) to check that the strakes were going to be as straight as I could make them and spotted them in place in small sections at a time until they were fixed in place along their entire length.
As each strake was fixed in place I then run the superglue along the entire outside edges of the strakes so it would "wick" its way into the fibres of the strake and the bottom ply skins..............and then repeated this 5 more times until all of the 6 strakes were fixed securely.
This process is actually very simple and does a nice job in a reasonably short time without the need to steam or soak the strakes or use any nails to pins that could cause the strakes to split or fracture.
A word of caution - I have not actually run the boat with these strakes fitted yet - so they could fall off !
The large scale racing cars are raced in all weather conditions (including rain and snow) and bond failure using this glue is not a problem. Some model boat builders use super-glue exclusively in the construction of their model boats - and the don't fall apart - so I have every reason to believe that this method will keep the strakes firmly fixed to the hull.
A small test you could try to test your method and to see how good the bond is:- Glue a small section of strake to some ply skin and make sure it is well fixed using the above method. When it is dry - see if you can find any way of pulling them apart without destroying the wood.
It works for me
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Topic: Lesro Javelin (Read 36649 times)