Let's not rush into anything . . .
(9/2008) The kit was purchased from Uncle John's Boats in September of 2002. Here it is February of 2008. Some count their building time in hours. Guess we'll count ours in years. That's Zac Baker above, paddling one of those plastic kayaks made same as your trash can. Now we're going to build a real boat out of wood.

On 2/23/08 Larry Kehler & Grant met to discuss some options -- wood and glue to use, etc. We'll build the boat pretty much as designed by Uncle John. We've followed most, if not all the links from John's website and enjoyed seeing the many variations. (See some examples in the left-hand column.) We'll make our boat 14 ft. long. Might be a good idea to put limber holes in ribs, but not on the centerline, because we'll probably be adding a small keel the length of the boat -- and we'll want to fasten it to the ribs at the boat's centerline.

2/23/08 - Grant went to Lowes (in Fenton) today to look at paint, glue, panel stock and wood for gunwales. Grant phoned Larry from the store, describing a few options. No decision on panel stock for the sides and bottom yet, but purchased some pine door stop to use for the gunwales -- and to run a test of the glue selected. Gorilla Glue claims to be 100% waterproof and to fill minor voids in the joint. We'll try a scarph joint in the gunwale stock to see how it works. (Later we used Titebond III)

Because our boat will be about 14 ft. long and the pine door stop (1-1/4" x 7/16") come in 7 ft. lengths, we'll have to have two scarphs in each of the two gunwales. Good practice for making those joints and glueing.

About the colors -- Grant thinks the hull exterior should be painted forest green or navy blue with stained gunwales, and the hull interior painted cream. But when he looked at the many color chips available, he decided to get samples of the paint colors desired, bring them to the store and buy the paint on another trip. Probably we'll need two quarts -- one for exterior of hull, one for interior. There's probably some stain around here for the gunwales.

These colors aren't even close to what Grant is looking for, but are the best he can describe using html code. (And your monitor probably isn't color calibrated, anyway.)

These colors are close: