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The gizmo I use is a "Pump-n-Seal" - a relatively cheap hand sealer for food products. You punch a pinhole in the can's lid, stick one of their special "band-aids" over the hole and pump the air out...

I have eleven rifles and two pistols within ten feet of where I'm sitting and it wouldn't bother me one bit if I was required to register and document them with the government. It actually seems...

He probably just liked cheese and bratwurst.

Polyester is better - just one more stretch variable that you can help control.

I've noticed that you can also get some rather nice small diameter 3-strand polyester at fabric stores. They sell it for drapery and home décor use and it tends to be smaller than the stuff generally...

I always just butt-joined all mine and never had any sort of fairness problems. On a couple of them, every full-length strip on the boat had at least one joint in it, sometimes two. We were pretty...

This is only 14' long, but is one type of dory-ish boat that can be built with strips and clear fiberglass/epoxy resin. At this size, you can pretty much still figure it out and build it by the seat...

It wouldn't be sticky from the canvas. there really isn't much filler or other stuff that goes all the way through from the outside. When you peel the canvas off of a canoe, it leaves pretty much...

The information you seek is in the minds of the best canoe restorers on earth and you can find them here:
http://forums.wcha.org/forum.php

That's all fine, but some folks don't seem to be able to tell the difference between a sail (or boat) made for cutting edge competition and one made for regular folks, cruising and sailing...

Dave is right, Tyvek will work - though it probably has even less stitch-holding power than polytarp, so adhesive bonding or woven cloth seam tape would be the best answers for seams. You can also...

Yeah, right........... just keep thinking that and don't forget to take your meds.

A quick point of order for the record on sewing scrim fabrics ("fabrics" made with plastic film containing a rather large grid of reinforcing fibers sandwiched between the film layers - this can be...

You might also look at this page on Sailrite's website:
http://search.sailrite.com/category/grommets-rings-for-canvas-sails

If you scroll down a bit, there are some snap-together plastic grommets...

And many of those boats don't sail worth a damn - and usually not due to the material used for the sails. It is what it is and it is impossible to make a case for it being anywhere near as stable or...

I think I could go along with most of that, until you got to the panel width part. The reason that sails are made with narrower panels is so that their shape can be placed accurately and held in that...

Prototyping in materials other than what you finally plan to use can be pretty inaccurate. Let's say we have a dinghy and we want to put a simple lugsail on it, or maybe switch from a Bermuda sail to...

Unepoxy Plus is the worst stuff I've ever had to remove from a boat. It's decent antifouling, though not particularly smooth, but pretty tough and works. Unfortunately, after a couple years, the...

I don't recall ever seeing any sort of blind fastener system that would install grommets or eyelets from one side only. Three-strand penny grommets or brass or plastic rings could be sewn by hand to...

See, it's the "one-hour" thing that bugs me the most. If you do a decent job and attempt to design and build a sail that really does work properly, no matter what it's made from, it's going to take...

Much of that statement is either just plain not true or very misleading. I think it would be more accurate to say that many older and traditional SAILORS are insensitive to sail cut.:mad: The thing...

I don't know how accurate it is, but an old and pretty well known racing canoe designer once told me that the hull emits a bow wave that not only pushes out to the sides, but also downward. In the...

One coat of resin is usually not enough to really protect well, though it obviously depends on how thick your coats are. Gougeon Brothers suggest two coats if you aren't going to sand it smooth...

I have no real problem with the idea of a 3/16"-1/4" thick cold molded core if that's what you want to do. It should be fairly similar in weight to a 3/16"-1/4" strip core, and the "strength" added...

The percentage of acetone that can be added to epoxy without adverse effects is zero. One of the main reasons that epoxy can do what it can do is because it does not contain evaporating thinners....

It all depends on how many rocks you plan to encounter, up close and personal. A typical stripper construction will withstand a lot of rock hits with only a scratch in the filler coats that would do...

Can be good, can be bad. The first thing that is great about making a small cotton sail is that you are free from the danger of putting ugly creases in the fabric at every stage during the process...

Polyester thread is the best bet - good strength, best UV life and it runs through the machine pretty smoothly. As you noted, nylon has poor UV life and also stretches too much. We measure sail...

Look up RKL canoes in the ads of old issues of WoodenBoat. Bob Lincoln built and sold two-layered, double-diagonal cold molded canoes for several years (two 1/8" layers of cedar, I believe with clear...

Hand-caned seats are nicer than the pre-woven-with-spline style (and probably more fun to make if you enjoy projects) but I don't think they are any more or less durable in general. The bow seat on...

Nylon fiber actually takes dye much better than polyester (due to some chemical thing that I don't know about). On a finished fabric, line or other product, it's always also a matter of what they...

It costs enough just to heat our 1922 house here in Wisconsin. Adding an old two-story garage to the plan would just be too much. I can spray varnish out there down to about 35 degrees without a...

I wonder about the not fully cured bit. Gougeon tests have shown that fairly small amounts of solvent can reduce the strength and effectiveness of epoxy. I think I'd gladly sacrifice any chemical...

Exactly, and an excellent photo of what it should look like Rod. Gee, I didn't know that my garage and driveway were "artificially controlled environments". I've glassed a lot of boats, kayaks and...

Any skin contact with green resin can be bad for you and eventually sensitize you to epoxy, so it is always a good idea to wait for the resin to cure at least a few days before attacking with any...

It sounds like just a matter of too much resin present. Perhaps just using less, giving it more time to saturate and changing application tools/methods would help. Realistically, a flat horizontal...

I usually sit, but reserve kneeling for rough water or for boats that have knee straps. Since I work crawling around on my knees on a hardwood floor, I'm not too hip to the idea of kneeling for...

Old Town's polyethylene boats were the first departures from the single-layered PE roto-molding used in kayaks and cheap canoes. The main problem with a roto-molded canoe is not the durability of the...

Coleman canoes are not made from Royalex (ABS/vinyl/foam sandwich, shaped by vacuum forming). They're single-layer roto-molded polyethylene. A very different and far less sophisticated construction.

Most sailmakers use the list of various cures from the Jeremy Howard Williams book (like the bleach formula above). He seems to be the only person that has ever posted a good one anywhere. I can't...

When I drive from Madison to our place in northern Wisconsin I pass half a dozen of those permanent big-box fireworks stores along the highway. They're always out on the edge of towns and most of the...

At first glance, it looks like that babe has one really ugly leg. :)

Our trimaran had a variation of that kick-up clam cleat idea on the centerboard with no moving parts. It used the regular polyester line and a solidly mounted plastic clam cleat. What they did was to...

I was waiting for the guy to come up from one of those dives with his shorts around his ankles and to see how he planned on pulling them back up with those water rockets strapped to his hands.

Or bore a hole and fill it with lead shot and epoxy.

Ash is very tough, as long as it is sealed properly and the good stuff has nice straight grain. Structurally, DF would be OK, but for outwales, it will likely get dinged up easily.

I thought about that, but at the time I had a plugged-up rifle and figured I'd better take care of it........... Plus, I was down on the lake shore and somebody might have seen me.

Shooting from...

Swiss 1.5FG in the Sharps, Goex or Shutzen in the rest, depending on who has what in stock when I need to order some. I think the Schutzen might be a little cleaner than the Goex. I'd like to be good...

I've done a fair bit of shooting, but in a limited capacity and just for fun to see if I could hit targets. I'm not generally in a position where I need to make one shot count (unless I'm trying to...

Swaged. There is nothing worse than having little flat spots on your balls.....
I've been shooting swaged on everything except the .36 '51 Navy (because I have some left over cast ones and it's so...