2011: Post 55 – Skinning of the Disko Bay

Continued from post 53…

It was windy today.  Not really fit to get on the water but might have been a good day to play in St. Philips.  I decided to spent the day skinning my Disko frame. 

I  started at about 9 am this morning.  First I turned the frame over and draped the polyester over it...

I added a few clamps to keep the polyester in place...

Then flipped her back over...

I was going to buy a couple hemostats but decided to be Sean-ish and made up a couple with some needle nose pliers and some bungee.  It worked very well.  I also ran a string from bow to stern to use as a guide to help me keep the stitching straight... 

I decided to stitch the back first for the practice.  I figured by the time I finished stitching the back I would be able to do a better job on the front...  I think the back worked out pretty well just the same, except the string did not help as my stitch was off centered....

There is some wrinkling in the bow and stern but this should come out once I use an iron to shrink the polyester...

stern

bow

It was hard to keep the stitching centered and straight, but all things considered, I was pleased with how things turned out...

In the above picture you can see I had previously cut away most of the extra fabric as I was doing the stitching.  But I still needed to cut the excess off.  I clamped a couple pieces of 1.5 inch wide pieces of leftover wood strips.  They served as a guide as I trimmed off the excess with a utility knife.  Before removing the clamps and wood strips I used a Bic lighter to melt the polyester strands.  This seems to have worked well enough, but I would have liked to of had a hot-knife to do a neat job of it...

At about 8 pm I finished the trimming.  I had been at it all day, off and on, and my fingers were sore so I decided to give it up for the day.  

This is how I left things with the stitching...

looking toward the stern

looking toward the bow

Sally, our cat, was hanging around at this point and I did not like the way she was sizing up the skinned Disko sitting on the floor.  I think she was just waiting for me to leave so she could use it as a scratch-board, or maybe crawl inside for a nap in the bow or stern!!  So I decided to hang it up from the floor joists again until I can finish the stitching next week.... we are planning a little paddle tomorrow...