A strong back is used to hold each form in alignment during the building process. I had this 16' plywood beam from my pervious kayak build, but it had gotten a little loose and wiggly sitting outside for 6 years. I added 54" to one end, and went over the entire thing adding bracing plates, half a box of drywall screws and misc. brad nails. Finally I pulled out the belt sander to clean up the top surface to remove any old globs of glue and make it easier to see layout lines.

The beam doesn't need to be perfectly straight or level, we will address that later with string lines.

Next I ripped down some 2x4's to make little mounting blocks for the risers that will hold each station. I made a little bridge so a base string line can run under without touching any thing and throwing off the line. I spaced the blocks at 32cm per the drawing spec. and used a square to ling each block up perpendicular with the string line.

These are loose in this photo, I ended up using hot melt glue to temporarily tack them in place, and once I'm 100% sure about the alignment each block will get two screws down into the strong back.

To wrap up my weekend I loosely clamped a few of the stations in place, just to get a little sneak peak of what the hull is going to look like. I'll need to run a top string line and mark center lines of each of the riser blocks before the stations get mounted permanently. It's almost time to start building the actual kayak!