Hello Sawmill Creek, my name is Martijn Bouwman and im from the Netherlands. As an exam project in my kabinetmaker/boatbuilders education i have built an 5 meter long faering together with a buddy of mine. Working together and being on an tight schedule made us make some compromises. I recently accepted his offer to buy him out and im now lacking the hurry and discussions of my buddy so im rethinking some of our choices(for example i removed the not so great ribs we used) now i was thinking about adding rivvets to the boat in order to back up possible weak connections between the strakes (what do you call the part where the strakes overlap?) i only recently found out that the acids in Oak wood that allow the reaction with iron also weaken the epoxy applied to it. So im not that confident about the glue(although when im done rebuilding the ribs it should be fine)

What is now was wondering is how you guys think about applying rivets to an epoxy sealed boat? the main argument against rivveting is that the rivvets could form an opening for the water to come in and allow the wood to be exposed. (other arguments were cost and time) I think it would improve the authentic feel for the boat myself

IMG-20120629-WA0001.jpg