Kayak Build, Day 9

The ribs are now cut to length and soaking. The original three were being weighed down in the water by a metal partition from some supermarket shelving that had been thrown out. Years of muck had accumulated on the metal work and it was all starting to come off and turn the water a horrible colour, as well as marking the wood, so I decided to find something else to weigh it down. What do you use to weigh something down in water? More water of course, in a plastic bucket, naturally. See, the two semesters of physics I did at uni wasn't wasted.



Due to my lack of forward planning with the ribs, I was determined not to do the same with the coaming. The coaming also needs to be soaked and bent, but it needs a to be bent around a form. We just happened to have an offcut of kitchen bench top from when we had our kitchen renovated a few years ago, better still, it was just the right size.

Now, the coaming is slightly longer than it is wide, by about 2 inches, so I couldn't just get a compass and draw a circle, nor did I want to do it freehand and end up with a lopsided coaming. What I did was mark out the centre of the form, offset it by about an inch either side, then use a piece of leftover wooden venetian blind as a compass. I was quite pleased with the way it turned out.





The finished form looks pretty good, I hope the coaming does too.



No more work on it today since I have to work again this evening. I thought I was getting the evening off since I'm working all day tomorrow, but there was no-one else available, so my poor back is getting a rest for a couple of hours. If you're wondering what I do that I get time to build a boat during the day, I'm a filler in the dairy section of a supermarket. That means a minimum of three hours heavy lifting. I'm milk boy tomorrow morning, so that's three hours of lifting 18kg milk crates, then four hours of filling the dairy and freezer load. Years of hunching over a desk in my previous job is coming back to haunt me now.

Anyway, that's another three hours on the build today, taking the total to 33 1/2 hours. I think I've gone over the $400 mark with materials too, as the oak I bought from Bunnings last night was more expensive than I thought. One thing I've learned from this project is how to do it better and cheaper next time.