Kayak Build, Day 7

I had thought of using the electric planer to plane the tops of the gunwales. There's a slight problem there though, the gunwales curve. This means that each end of the planer will be touching the gunwales, but the blade wont be. So, I used the block plane instead. Good old hand tools.

Once the planing was done, I turned the boat upside down and started on the keelson. The instructions say to use three temporary spacers to hold the keelson in place, one on the first deck beam of 8", one at deck beam seven of 5" and one at deck beam eleven of 4". It also says the distance between the top of the keelson and bottom of the gunwales should be 10" at the bow, 7" in the middle and 6" at the stern. I got a little confused by this, since I was still thinking of the boat being the right way up, so those distances would basically be the distance between the keelson and the gunwales. I just cut the spacers to the sizes mentioned and ignored the other measurements.

The next two pictures show the keelson temporarily lashed in place. There's a slight curve in it from stem to stern. If I'd made it completely straight, the finished boat would paddle in a straight line very easily, but would be almost impossible to turn, so you need a bit of rocker.





Once the keelson is in place the stem and stern pieces are cut. I made a bit of a miscalculation in cutting out the stem piece, so it became the stern instead. I'd recommend getting a stiff piece of cardboard and making up a template when you're doing the this part. It will be a lot easier than trying to line up a 5 1/2" board and mark it, unless you have someone helping you. I'll be using a template to do the stem piece, if I can find a decent piece of cardboard. I work in a supermarket, so that shouldn't be hard.

The stern piece was cut to shape using a jigsaw. Cutting a 3/4" thick piece of Western Red Cedar with a jigsaw is a lot easier than cutting a 1 1/2" piece of pine with the same tool, so this went fairly quickly.

Once it's cut to shape, it's then clamped in place and more drilling and pegging is done. The end of the keelson will be cut flush with the end of the stern piece. As you can see from the next picture, I've probably put one of the dowels a little too far back, as I'll be cutting right through it.

The stern piece is then lashed to the gunwales. More sore fingers.





It looks straight at the moment, but I haven't run a string line along the keel yet to see if it really is straight. I don't want a boat that will keep wanting to turn in one direction, unless I'm paddling in a strong crosswind all the time. That said, the Greenland kayaks don't have much freeboard (hull above water), so they tend not to weathercock as much as some boats that I've paddled.



Tomorrow the stem piece will be fitted, then it'll be time to start on the ribs. The instructions say to use 6mm thick ribs, the material I have is 8mm thick, so I'll have to plane it to the correct thickness first. This'll be the fun part, since a lot of first time builders have trouble bending the ribs to shape. Once the ribs are in place though, the frame won't be all that far off being finished.

That's another three and a half hours on the job today, taking the total to 28 hours. I would have liked to spend more time on it today, but I have to go to work soon.