Kayak Build, Day 19

I finally got the skin on Thursday, but didn't do anything on the kayak until this morning. I've been trying to decide how to do the seat and this is what I came up with.



At the moment the seat is just lashed in place underneath to hold it in place. It works quite well as it is, but I'm not sure the holes used for lashing would hold up for too long, so it'll be sewn in properly.

The backrest is sewn up with artificial sinew, that came with the skin, which is why I hadn't done it earlier. The padding inside is just a piece of closed cell foam, cut from and old camping mat and folded in half. It'll simply be tied to the deck beam.



Below is the first row of stitching on the seat. It doesn't look too bad, if I do say so myself.



Once all the stitching is done I'll slide another piece of closed cell foam in underneath it. The only thing left then is to put the skin on. Then it'll be a real boat.

I think I spent about 2 hours on the job today, taking the total to 66 hours. Keep in mind though that it's 2 hours of unnecessary work, since a lot of people don't fit seats to Greenland kayaks. If nothing else, I think it really adds to the look of the boat, and it's a great way to personalise it.

Still waiting

Not much has happened in the past week, as far as building the boat is concerned.

According to the USPS parcel tracking service, the material I've been waiting for to finish the boat was in customs clearance on Monday. Now I don't blame customs for the delay, since we've had a couple of public holidays this week, one on Monday and one yesterday. In fact I suspect it actually cleared customs on Monday afternoon and it's Australia Post that I've been waiting on. I know it's Australia Post I'm waiting on now, because I saw their delivery driver turn up this morning. He got out of his van, rearrange a few parcels, stuck a card in our letterbox, then drove off without bothering to come up to our door and see if anyone was home. Not that he needed to check anyway, he could have left the parcel on our front doorstep, like the guy that delivered a case of wine later this morning. So now I have to wait until 4pm so I can drive to the post office and pick up the parcel. As I'm going out for a paddle tomorrow morning, then working, it doesn't look like I'll be progressing much with the build until Saturday.

So, what have I done in the past week?

I put a bed sheet over the frame the other day to see how it would look with the skin on. I'm not too happy with the way the chines end up at the bow, they'll be a bit prominent once they're covered up, so I cut about an inch off each one and planed them down a bit. The picture below was taken last week and you can see how far forward it goes. It'll still stick out a bit now, but not as bad as before.



Until I get the seat fitted and some kind of backrest sorted out, I'm not sure if deck beam four, the footrest, is close enough. So, I've been cutting a piece of pine to size to fit as a foot rest in case it's needed.

The coaming ring has about three coats of marine grade varnish on it at the moment and is looking better with every coat. I'll put at least six on in total and see how it looks then.

One of the tools I bought off eBay to use on the kayak was an old Stanley spokeshave. When it arrived I tried it out and couldn't get the hang of it, so I haven't used it on the boat yet. I gave the blade a sharpen yesterday and tried it on a scrap piece of wood (I have lots of them now). The difference between a blunt blade and one that's had two minutes on an oil stone is amazing. When I made Donna's Greenland paddle, at the beginning of this blog, I made the handle a bit too thick. Yesterday afternoon, after I'd sharpened the spokeshave, I sat down on a little camping stool and started trimming the handle. I wish I'd had it when I first made the paddles, it's a joy to use once you get the hang of it.

The only other thing I've done, kayak-wise, is to start marking out some of the leftover 1/2" ply from the coaming for the cross-sections of Donna's boat. I'll be building her a Tom Yost designed Sea Bee 13. No rib bending to do with that design and it's a bit more roomy than a Greenlander. Donna has specified that she want's a boat that is easy to get in and out of and I think the Sea Bee fits the bill there.

Deck Lines, or Day 18

It's amazing how much time you can kill, just doing something like hand carving bits of wood.

I spent two hours today making the other three toggles for the deck lines and I must say, it was a very enjoyable two hours. It would have been even more enjoyable if I'd known then that I wasn't going to get a call for me to go into work. Another evening off.

The photos below give you an idea of what the deck lines will look like once they're installed on the finished boat. The paddle, or whatever else you want to secure on deck, slips under the toggles, or the lines, then you slide the toggles outward and they tighten. The way I have the paddle in these photos, it will work as an outrigger. That way I can rest one end of the paddle on the beach while I get into the boat and it shouldn't fall over and embarrass me.





You could, if you wanted to, put one in front of the cockpit out to one side and one behind the cockpit to the other side, with floats on the ends and you'd have a pretty stable boat. I suspect it might be a bit harder to turn though.

The skin hasn't turned up yet, but the Cunningham book I ordered from Amazon a week before the skin, arrived early this week. Hopefully, that means the skin will arrive Tuesday. It won't arrive on Monday, since we have a public holiday then.

Total on the job now is 64 hours. I should mention that a lot of the stuff I'm doing on the boat now isn't really necessary. You could build it without a seat, or deck lines, and you don't need to oil or varnish the frame. By leaving those steps out, you could save yourself quite a few hours.

Kayak Build, Day 17

Although I didn't do a whole lot to the kayak today, what little I did do made a hell of a difference to its appearance.

If you compare the next picture to the first one of yesterday's post, you can see what a coat of linseed oil can do to timber. It really shows most in the cedar.



Wolfgang Brink says in his instructable, that it seems a shame to cover it all up with a skin once you get to this stage, and I can see what he means now. I can understand why some builders don't dye the skin of their kayaks, instead leaving them to show the colours of the timber through the fabric.



One of the things that came up quite well with a coat of oil was the aft breast hook. I'm actually quite proud of the way it looks, so proud I photographed it more than once.





Once the skin is on and covered in Corey's Goop, the last job will be to add the deck lines. While the oil was drying today, I figured I'd get started on the toggles that will form part of the deck lines. These are made from a piece of left over cedar from one of the chines, carefully carved out using a 1" chisel, then oiled. It doesn't look much now, but it should look great once it's installed on the boat. There'll be four of these in total, two in front of the cockpit and two behind. They'll allow me to slide my paddle in under them and use it as an outrigger when I squeeze myself into the boat, or I can use them to carry an extra paddle.



Below is an idea of how the seat will look once it's sewn in place. I'm thinking of making some kind of back band with some of the leather so that I'm not leaning against the deck beam. I just need to work out how I'm going to do it.

The only other thing to do is to varnish that coaming. It looks kind of out of place at the moment in its raw form.



I reckon I spent about two and a half hours on it today, some of which was just doing little touches, like wiping off excess oil, or fiddling around with the leather for the seat. That takes me to 62 hours total.

Kayak Build, Day 16

Lots of little jobs on the kayak today mean the frame is finally finished.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I needed to put a couple of blocks under the coaming so that it would fit. The one in the picture below is the aft one, behind the cockpit. Because it's doubled the surface area of that deck beam, it makes it a bit more comfortable when I lean on it too. Although, I'll probably put some kind of padding there anyway. I'm still working out the fine details as far as the seating arrangements are concerned.



I also fitted the aft breast hook and did a much better job of it than I did with the forward one. The ribs that needed lashing have all been lashed and everything has been sanded. The coaming has been sanded and the lacing holes drilled, all 44 of them. That'll need to be varnished, otherwise water will soak into the end grain and probably buckle it. I've also pre-drilled the holes for the deck lines.

All that's left now is to give the whole thing a coat of linseed oil, then put the skin on when it arrives. Oh, and fit the seat, but I can't do that till the needles and sinew arrive with the skin.

If you're wondering why the outdoor shots are taken with the boat on sawing horses instead of laying on the ground, I couldn't find a chook poo free spot to put it.



Here's the obligatory inside-the-hull shot. I'll probably do another one once the skin is on. In fact, once the frame is oiled I'll probably dig out my studio flashes and take some high quality pictures of the whole thing.









I think I spent about 4 hours on the job today, taking the total to 59 1/2. I'll definitely be taking longer than 60 hours overall, but I reckon 60 hours is a good average. I know of people that have bent all their ribs in under an hour, it took me all week.

Kayak Build, Day 15

Bit of a varied day today, so I thought I'd show you something different to the usual kayak building photos. We have a passion-fruit vine growing around our vegetable garden. The local Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos usually eat seeds, but they're pretty partial to passion-fruit, so they have a habit of stealing ours.

The bush behind with the pink flowers is a Grevillea. The lorikeets we look after love them, and apparently they're rather nice dunked in a cup of tea too, but I haven't tried it yet.



Anyway, back to the job at hand. I got up early today and visited Bunnings after dropping Donna off at work. I bought a 1200mm x 600mm piece of 12mm plywood to make a coaming. The coaming is basically two rings glued together, one bigger than the other, to attach a skirt. It wouldn't have hurt to add a third ring for more depth, and I'll probably do that for the coaming on Donna's kayak, but it'll do. The only problem I found was that there wasn't enough clearance between the coaming and the deck stringers, so I'll need to add a couple of, for want of a better word, bits of wood, to raise the coaming up. It fits perfectly between the stringers, but that will cause problems when it comes time to skin the boat, if I don't add the bits of wood.

I glued the two pieces of coaming together just before heading off to work this afternoon. It's only sitting in place for the benefit of the camera, and my step-daughter and her hubby who came over for dinner tonight. I know it's not traditional, but jigsawing plywood is so much easier than bending oak. Another layer of ply would have been good, but I'm a cheapskate, so an inch thick coaming will do the job. When it comes right down to it, it's only there to hold a skirt.



Yes, the coaming looks wonky in the next picture, but that's not how it'll be fitted eventually. It's pretty much sitting there for somewhere to dry.



I did a bit more lashing tonight, six more ribs to lash and another breast hook to fit. then the frame will be right to skin. The coaming needs sealing with some marine type varnish, then drilling for when the skin is fitted. I'll oil the frame as well.

The leather turned up today for the deck lines. The only thing I'm waiting for now is the nylon for the skin, which is coming from the states.

I reckon I only spent about 2 hours on the job today, I had so many interruptions, it's hard to say for sure, but 2 hours takes the total to 55 1/2.

A paddling day

I didn't do much on the kayak today, just drilled a few holes so I could lash some of the ribs where I'm not happy with how they're sitting in the mortises.

I tried bending the outer ring of the coaming today and it broke right where the main ring broke, probably because of the tight bend there. So I'm going to try something else with the coaming, instead of stressing out about trying to bend it. I'm going to get some 1/2" marine ply and make a laminated coaming instead. I'm a lot better at wielding a jigsaw than I am at bending wood. Also, I'll be building Donna's kayak to a Tom Yost design and the coamings on Tom's kayaks are mostly plywood.

It wasn't a wasted day today though, since we got the double kayak out and went for a paddle. It was Donna's first chance to try out the Greenland paddle. The one I made her is a bit too thick in the handle, so I need to trim that down a bit. The only complaint Donna had was that she ended up a lot wetter than she usually does with the old Euro paddle. She also got to try out a Werner carbon fibre paddle for a few minutes, as we tagged along with Katrina and Tony from Redlands Kayak Tours. Tony's asked me if I want to help out with a big tour they have happening on the 19th, so hopefully I'll have the Greenlander launched by then. If not, I'll be doing it in the Nantucket.

Sorry there's no piccies today, but the only ones I took were of people on the tour since Tony forgot to put a memory card in his camera.