Kayak Build, Day 12

No work this evening, so I spent quite a bit of time on the boat. I still haven't finished the ribs, but the end is in sight.

As you can see below, there is still a bit of frustration, some of the ribs ended up in the backyard.



That rib above did end up getting used though. I knew some of the ribs toward the bow were never going to get bent properly without breaking, so I decided to use some of the ribs that had already broken, but had a bit of a bend in them. Ribs 2, 3, 4 and 5 have all been fitted as two halves and lashed to the keelson to keep them in place.



Some of the ribs have turned out really well, especially toward the middle of the boat, where they're long and the bends are nice and gradual. However, once they're in place there's a lot of gaps between some of them and the keelson, so I've done a lot of shimming.

I've temporarily fitted the hull stringers, or chines if you prefer. That gives me a better idea of how the finished boat will look and where I need to make adjustments. There is going to be a lot of shimming on the chines as well, otherwise the finished boat might end up paddling in circles.







You can see in the next to photos that there are a couple of ribs that are very asymmetrical and that's where I'll need to add shims to make sure the chines themselves are symmetrical. I must admit though, it is starting to look pretty good. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Looking at some of the crooked ribs got me thinking about a name for the boat. I tried a few different ideas in Google Translator, translating from English into either Icelandic, or Russian. They didn't have Greenlandic, or what every you'd call their language. Since the boat should look pretty good with the skin on, and you won't be able to see the rough bits, I put "skin deep" into translator and it came up with неглубоко, pronounced nyergubaka. If you translate it back to English it means shallow, which also suits the kayak, since it has such a shallow draft. I'll have to see how I go at painting it on the back of the coaming.





Only three more ribs to go. Hopefully they'll get fitted tomorrow, then I can fit the chines and that'll be the hull finished. Then I can turn the boat over and fit the breast hooks and forward deck stringers. I fitted the aft stringers today. Since the aft stringers get sat on when you enter the boat, I figured I'd better make sure they're the right distance apart. So I made sure the neighbours couldn't see me, then measured the distance from butt cheek to butt cheek. You can just see the stringers in the photo above. Yes, I have a small bum.

I'll be using a piece of leather for a seat and that'll be lashed to the two ribs that are in that part of the cockpit. The piece I bought on eBay last week for $25 should be enough for at least two kayaks and probably a couple of wallets or a handbag as well. The 8mm wide leather I bought for the decklines on the same day as the seat only just got dispatched today. I'm not impressed with that particular eBay seller. The skin is coming from the states, so hopefully it'll arrive just in time for me to use it.

Six hours on the job today. What with stopping for lunch, feeding a couple of baby birds we're looking after, and doing some studying, it was quite a full day. The total 47 hours. It's looking more and more like 60 hours is a decent estimation of how long it takes to build one of these boats.