Using stains to add a little extra color to your boat.

There is no accounting for taste, but for some reason I find okoume a little bit boring. While the grain can be quite nice, the color is often a little bland. In my opinion it would often benefit from a little pumping up.

I constructed the coaming recess in the last post, now the trick is to install it in the boat. I start by smoothing the deck a little by giving it a quick scraping. This just makes it a little easier to mark the hole.

The Petrel has a unique recess around the cockpit. This lowers the back of the coaming which allows for easier rolling and it also helps create a good place for thigh/knee braces.

More social media from Guillemot Kayaks. If you have a twitter account you can follow the latest news about kayak building at http://twitter.com/#!/GuillemotKayaks

If you have a blog with a feed reader or want to subscribe to the Guillemot Kayak blog feed, you can now click on the small RSS icon on the lower right of all the blog pages, or link to http://www.guillemot-kayaks.com/guillemot/node/feed.

The Petrel has a distinct feature line on the front deck where there is a sharp, chine-like angle in the surface of the deck extending forward from either side of the cockpit. The feature does not extend all the way to the end of the boat, but just a few feet from the cockpit.

For the deck I wanted the stern to match the bow as well as book matched. I have sometimes done this by getting two consecutive flitch-cut boards using the strips from one board for the bow, and the other board for the stern. The joint in the middle near the cockpit is not very noticable because the wood matches quite closely. I was not able to find flitch cut planks for this boat.

The sheer strip on the deck are similar to the sheer strips on the hull. The difference is that now you have existing strips to fit agains. Like the hull I chose to taper the ends of the strips to match the sheer strips on the hull. I tapered both sides at the same time.