Besides being pegged, the deck beams are also lashed to the gunwales. I usually do this before ribbing, but this kayak has so little "pinch" in the ends that the lashing could wait. It's an important step though, because it really steadies the construction when all joints are pressed together by the lashing.

Before the masik is lashed and pegged into position, its final shape is finished, edges are rounded off and the underside is sanded smooth. 

With all the deck beams lashed, the deck stringers can now be attached, During entry and exit, the aft stringers take the load instead of the skin. I prefer when these stringers are not in contact with the skin, so I counter-sink them into the aft deck beams to lie just below the skin.

I run the front deck stringers from the masik (into which they are counter-sunk) to the foremost deck beam. This is a longer span than usual, but it will give me a little more foot room and in this kayak I need all I can get. The stringers rest on spacer blocks over the foot rest deck beam, and the deck beam in front of it.

Both the fore and aft stringers are pegged into the deck beams, and lashed to stay put if, for instance, the knees are pressed up against them during a roll or similar.

The frame is now almost finished. Only the breast plates that reinforce the stem/gunwale joint remain.

Unfortunately, I will not be able to meet my goal of a finished weight of 10 kg. The finished frame is 9 kg, so the finished kayak will be closer to 12 kg. I could probably have saved a kilo by further reducing the dimensions of keelson, chine stringers, masik, etc. Getting down to under 10 kg would have been very difficult without resorting to tricks like drilling out "superfluous" wood etc... Still, 9 kg for the frame is not too bad!

Total building time: 27 hours

Next step: breast plates 

And finally a "David Hockney panorama" of the workshop, containing no less than 12 kayaks:
(click to open in new window)

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