End of April: Alignment Problems at Puzzle Joints

 

So I may have been over working an issue. 16 feet of panels and you can see that panels are slightly offset from each other at the bow and stern (just mm but noticeable). Since you wind up sanding the bow and stern anyways and then add a thick bead of thickened epoxy as stems to both, this may have not been a problem.

But the problem originates at the puzzle joints in the middle of the kayak. The manual stresses that the puzzle joints must align from one panel to the next. If you look closely, you will see that mine don't. Hence the offset  at bow and stern. The problem is accumulative. If the first and second rows of panels are misaligned that error carries along with panels further up. 

The panels are cut precisely and when you get the puzzle joints perfectly aligned so do the bow and stern joints. My problem that when I started to install frames and bulkheads, drilling holes for wiring and then wiring in the frames was done without enough attention to alignment at the puzzle joint. It was easy enough to tug panels back into alignment before the frames went in. Not so after. 

So I headed in to see Rob and the crew at Boatcraft to see how critical this problem was.