Kayak Build, Day 14

It was a bit of a relaxed building day today. I did some lashing, took a break, did some more lashing, chatted to Donna, who was sitting in the sun watching me work.

The chines are now in place. My thumbs were aching at the end of it, mainly from holding the lacing against the chines to keep tension on it. I reckon you could play a tune on the lacing. Once the skin is on, you could accompany yourself, playing percussion.

Once I'd taken a couple of pictures out in the yard I tried the boat on for size. It's a tight fit. Because of where the ribs are in the cockpit, it tends to force my bum a bit further back than I'd like, so my feet don't reach deck beam three properly. Deck beam three is the footrest. That may change once I fit the seat, but if it doesn't I have plenty of offcuts of timber to fashion another footrest.





Once the outdoor pics were taken, I fitted the forward deck stringers. They could do with a couple of extra pegs in each one, as could the rear stringers, but they don't really need it.



I also fitted the forward breast hook, which involved making lots of cuts with a tenon saw then knocking them out with a hammer and cleaning up with a 1" chisel. I did a pretty good job of that part. It's a pity I wasn't as good at actually fitting the breast hook.



As you can see from this picture, it's a bit wonky. When I do the aft one I'll cut it a bit too big, then I can trim it down to size.



That's the frame almost done. Just the aft breast hook to do and the coaming. I took the coaming off the form today and it went a funny shape due to those two kinks I mentioned previously. Once the outer ring is fitted though it'll fix that up. It'll be a bit like laminating.

I weighed the frame today too. A lot of people have said to me, it must be heavy with all that wood. It weighs 10kg. The skin shouldn't weigh more than about 2kg, so it's still going to be a boat I can put up on the car roof rack with one hand.

Another three hours today, taking the total to 53 1/2 hrs.