One thing I am quite pleased about it how the coaming has turned out so far. It's not perfect, as you can see from this first photo, it has a couple of kinks in it. They're not bad enough for me to throw it out and try again though. I bent the coaming by clamping it to the form and pouring hot water on it from the kettle. I think it took about six refills of the kettle, but I eventually got there. Interestingly, the kinks are at the front and back of the coaming. That's not because it's a tighter bend there, which it is slightly, it's just the way it turned out. Hopefully they won't look out of place once it's on the boat.
As far as the ribs are concerned, it's a really frustrating job. I have about eight of them fitted and a couple of those I'm not too happy with as they're only just sitting in the mortises. They'll need shimming to make sure they stay in place once the frame is finished.
I've gone back to using the steamer to do the ribs, mainly because it's very hard to keep the bend in one side of the rib when the other end is boiling. What I'm doing now is putting a hand towel in the steamer with the ribs. As I take out a rib, I wrap it in the towel, and that keeps it hot so I have more time in which to bend it. This allows me to bend the whole rib at once. I've got about as far as I can with the ribs at the moment though, since I need to buy some more wood.
Bending the ribs is a really time consuming job, as it involves a lot of standing around waiting. So I've done a few other bits and pieces while I wait. I've cut and shaped the rear deck stringers. I could fit them now, but the kayak is upside down and turning it the right way up would involve too much cleaning up of bits of rib and clamps.
I've also started on one of the breast hooks. These are small pieces of wood that will fit at each end of the boat to smooth the transition between the gunwales and the stem and stern pieces. I suspect fitting them and the deck stringers will be a couple of the easier jobs for this project.
As I said at the beginning of this post, another four and a half hours, taking the total to 41 hours.
Hi Steve,
ReplyDeleteI had pretty much the same problems steaming the ribs on my Greenlander. I was using a plywood steambox connected to an old kettle on a gas burner. The steam box had a wet towel covering the other end to keep the steam in the box.
I have since changed to a foam box connected to a clothes steamer. I leave the wood to steam for one 1 hour and it bends quite nicely. I can get a 120mm radius bend in 8mm pine without too much difficulty. I soak the timber for around one week.
I couldn't see from the photos if you are using a compression strap. This makes a big difference. I use an old piece of seatbelt webbing for this.
Andrew
I'm thinking I'll steam for a bit longer with the next lot of ribs too. Keeping them hot with the hand towel certainly seems to make a difference. I didn't use a compression strap, since I'm not bending the ribs on a form. With hindsight I think a form would have been a good idea.
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