JEM Watercraft

Hi -

So I was perusing another boat-oriented site (rhymes with West Coast Daddler) and they had a thread questioning the need for spacers when stitching a boat together. To a first approximation, they felt that spacers are unnecessary.

Now over here, spacers are the Recieved Wisdom, with the idea being to avoid hard-points of wood-on-wood contact. Come the day I start my Merrimac, I'll follow the Wisdom handed down on high from Jem The Almighty, but I'm curious about the difference of opinion.

- Hank

They are a nice way to control the panels and keep them from riding over one another. I personally find them useful.

Are they necessary? No. They will end up adding a little weight to the boat since they hold a constant gap between panels. Maybe a pound.

West Coast Paddler is a nice informative sight about sea kayaking. I've been dabbling in some sea kayak designs but there are so many out there and I have other projects to tend to first.

Hi Hank,

Mate, if you are going to go with a laser cut or CNC cut plywood kit, the spacers are probably not necessary.

If you are going to go from plans, my very humble opinion is that the spacers are an advantage. It is very difficult to achieve the same level of accuracy and consisently perfect curves as machine cut panels. The spacers create a small gap in your panels and this is a lot more forgiving of our (my) human errors.

Also, a slightly irregular gap (filled with wood flour) is a lot less obvious than panels joined hard together with small gaps here and there that need to be filled.

Thanks for the responses. Given my ability to almost cut a straight line, it sounds like spacers are most definitely the way to go for me.

- Hank

What gap wide you recommend?
Eduardo.

No gap is required or recommended.

But if you use the spacers to help correct wavy panels, then make it as small as gap as you can.

I feel the space epoxy filled color variation is part of the beauty of these boats

ozark wrote:I feel the space epoxy filled color variation is part of the beauty of these boats

Very true. You can realy accent to boat by mixing different colors.