Stitch and Glue

Working on taping up the deck-hull joint on a stitch and glue Night Heron at the WoodenBoat School.

Turn plywood into a beautiful sea kayak in 6 days

Sea kayaking is the sport of taking a small boat out on to the big ocean. You could buy an ordinary plastic kayak, or you could build your own which will be lighter, faster and more fun than buy. It will also be more beautiful.

A unique feature of the Night Heron is the "puzzle boat" construction.The short pieces of plywood are joined together with a puzzle joint to make the full 18' length of the kayak. The different pieces of plywood are stained different colors creating a beautiful graphic contrast highlighting the puzzle joint.

This method of building boats use pre-cut plywood panels that are "stitched" together along their joints and then glued. The shape of the boat is determined by the shape of the panels. The 2 dimensional flat panels are bent when they are stitched along their curved edges to the adjoining panel. The shape of the curve between the adjoining panels determines the 3 dimensional shape of the finished boat. Stitch and glue boats can be build without forms although forms can help assure that the desired shape is acheived.

Because stitch-and-glue boat construction uses a relatively small number of wood pieces a boat can be build in relatively short order. Because plywood is inherently quite strong for its weight the resulting boat is quite tough and lightweight with a minimum of additional reinforcement.

While the technique quickly produces a boat, that does not imply that it is necessarily easier than strip-building. The shape of a stitch-and-glue boat is largely determined by the shapes of the plywood panels. If the panels are not accurately cut, the resulting boat may be quite badly distorted.

This makes stitch and glue designs very well suited for kits.

"Stitch and Glue" refers to "stitching" together panels of plywood with wire and then gluing the joints. A stitch and glue boat uses carefully cut panels of thin plywood which when joined together bend into the desired 3 dimensional shape. It is the geometry of how the panels must bend to create a tight joint that defines the shape of the boat.

This method of building goes together quickly because there are relatively few parts that must be assembled, however because the panels of plywood are relatively wide there is typically a hard angle or chine between the panels. This somewhat limits the variety of shapes possible, but does not detract from the performance of a well designed boat.

I've decided to make the plans for my Stitch & Glue Guillemot available to internet users as "share ware". If you end up building this boat please send me a photograph of the results.

If you don't want to deal with lofting from the offsets, I have full sized drawings available.

You can read my experiences making this kayak in the journal I tried to keep as I built it. For now the journal will have to