Fragile

Despite how fragile they look, I've found the kayaks quite durable. There have already been a couple of occasions when, trying to single handedly load one of the boats back onto a pair of sawhorses I've dropped one end onto the floor. After cursing my clumsiness I've checked the area where it hit and never a scratch. Anyhow, at the state they're in I can probably patch anything that might happen to them fairly easily.

One kayak has been fitted out with its deck beams and foot pedals and is ready for the deck to be applied. The other is still waiting on some hull fairing and exterior epoxy. I've been procrastinating a bit on the second boat; partially because it's more fun to work on the boat that's so much further along and boat-like, partially because I'm not looking forward to a repeat of the fiasco that was fiber-glassing the first boat.

The trouble was the foam rollers. Once exposed to the epoxy they soon started to disintegrate, leaving little bits of foam in my nice smooth finish. I would go through a couple of rollers in a coat, chasing each with a brush to pull out all the little bits of foam from the freshly applied epoxy. Having to apply 4-5 coats I was able to experiment with a few different brands of roller, and all more or less exhibit this behavior.

I was hoping to have found some type of elegant solution to this problem, so the next time it would be a breeze to fiberglass the second boat. But I've found nothing yet.

Small Progress

We've been busy lately, unfortunately just not with kayak building. I have however managed to scrape together some meager accomplishments from the last month:

Kayak #2 Stitched
We've managed to stitch the second boat, which now sits waiting to be faired and glued. It's been tough to go back and repeat the work that we just did on kayak #1 with said kayak sitting nearby looking almost done. But we managed to pull ourselves away to catch up on kayak #2.

Almost Deckbeams
We've also managed to put together the frame on which we'll be bending the deck beams. It doesn't look like much in the picture but it took a while to put together. Mostly because I was drilling the 2-inch holes for the clamps with a cordless drill. I had to stop and charge a few times.

Kayak #1 Just Sitting there looking nice...

Kayak #2 Freshly stitched and being faired...
The Deckbeam form...

Catch-up

Rich did some catching up of the second kayak this past weekend, getting it about halfway wired up and fixing a mistake we made earlier when hurriedly gluing on the sheer clamps. He also trimmed all the wire ends off of the outside of the first kayak, giving it a sleek kayak-y look and leading us to believe that that one at least would (probably) float if we were to be silly enough to put it in the water. Now it's ready for sanding the outside before we coat it with fiberglass and epoxy and move on to the top part (deck beam and deck and hatches and seat and finishing and other stuff). The first kayak is remarkably light even with all the epoxy we slathered onto it... here's hoping that bodes well for the finished product weight!


Both kayaks in perspective. The more-finished one is in the foreground. The one in the background has only been half stitched (as evidenced by the aft all askew).
Close-up of the wire stitching. Working with copper wire has been a major part of the project so far.
The relatively smooth and sleek glued kayak.
Again the glued kayak (and the laundry, which also was in process).

Glueing the First Kayak

This week we made some significant progress on one of the kayaks. We took the kayak that we had wired together last post and flipped it over onto the scaffold that you see below.

With the scaffold clamped to the sheers we placed levels across the kayak, approximately at the location of the bulkheads. Then we adjusted the kayak within the scaffold until the levels and our eyes told us it was level and even.

Getting the kayak straight at both ends took some doing. From above it wasn't at all obvious where the kayak was out of true. This meant spending a lot of time lying on our backs underneath the kayak then crawling back up again and tweaking, then crawling down again for another look.

Getting the stern to come together properly was problematic. There was about a quarter inch gap between the sides and bottom at the stern. The copper wires weren't strong enough to pull them together on their own. The solution was to tie a tourniquet around the back of the kayak to pull everything together while it was stitched.

Then in a whirlwind session of mixing and applying epoxy, fiberglass and filler, we glued the interior of the vessel. We had neglected to buy the large sheets of fiberglass yet, so we were unable to finish the cockpit area. But we did manage to glue and tape all of the other seams, and insert the bulkheads.


Next time we need to catch up with the other kayak (seen below in its current state)...

Hey look, it's a kayak!

This weekend was an exciting stint of kayak-building as we ended up with something with three dimensions instead of two! Last time we had got one boat's worth of pieces ready for stitching and we began the weekend by catching the other boat up (gluing sheer clamps to the side panels and finishing cutting and drilling the bottom panels). Since this marked the end of sawing for a while we also took the opportunity to do a thorough "shop cleaning" and remove the accumulated sawdust and scraps crowding the floor.

Next we were ready to begin the stitching of the stitch and glue technique. We cut a lot of 18 gauge copper wire into lengths of about 3-4 inches and began by stitching together the ends of one set of side panels and placing them upside down on a pair of sawhorses. We installed a spreader at the middle of the kayak to give it the final width (about 2 feet) and then we took one pair of bottom panels and stitched together the keel seam by passing a piece of wire through each hole and twisting it around itself on the other side, thus holding the panels together. Even though we were warned by the instruction book not to make it too tight, the first set were indeed too tight to open up. As we were excited by the process we just swapped in the other set of bottom panels, loosened up a little and repeated the process, and we were able to open the bottom panels up forming an obtuse tent on top of the side panels (supported by some cross beams). It really looked pretty kayak-like at this point!

Next we needed to stitch the bottom of the side panels to the top of the bottom panels. We started at the bow, each taking one side and carefully drilling a few holes at a time and stitching the panels together smoothly and evenly. While feeding and twisting the wires got tiresome, it was exciting to see the boat take shape, and by the end of the afternoon we had one fully stitched kayak. Next we'll be making sure that it's true and straight and preparing for bulkheads and fiberglass fillets.

Almost starring to look kayak-like

This week we finally managed to glue the sheer clamps to one of the kayaks. It took us a little bit longer than we expected to get to this point.

Firstly it was a bit awkward to cut out the 17ft long panels. We didn't have a bench long enough to hold something that long, so we had to drape the panels over two benches and a table saw. Their heights were similar but not really all that close, further complicating things. Even with everything clamped down one of us needed to hold the panels still while the other cut. Despite out precautions we still went though a few blades though this process. At one point we had run out of blades and had to finish cutting the panel using a hand saw (see below).

After the fiasco with the sheer clamps last time we had to do a bit of cleanup/catchup work to get them into shape to be glued. It seems the epoxy mix was a bit thin and ran out of some of the joints, and needed to be re-glued.

This leaves us with one kayak's worth of panels ready to start stitching and the second kayak's set of materials is ready for the sheer-clamp-gluing process that we did this week. In fact we might have been able to glue both this week but for the lack of both time and clamps. I think we're going to need to get a few more clamps if we plan on continuing work on both kayaks in parallel.

The sheer clamps and the fair curve

This weekend we continued where we left off last time with the side and bottom panels. With the stations and offsets drawn we used a batten to draw a fair curve over the points.
The batten was a bit tricky to obtain. We needed something long and uniformly flexible, so no knots or scarfs. I found what must have been the longest piece of lumber that Home Depot carries (none of their measurement tools exceed 17ft). It was in a bin along with other pieces of trim and edging. I think its dimensions were roughly 1'' x 1/2''. As you can probably imagine, getting it home was an adventure in itself. The batten was quite a bit longer than my car, but being flexible readily conformed to the shape of my car. It looked a bit like a large flattened "n" stretching from bumper to bumper. Unfortunately I was so focused on getting it home safely that no pictures were taken.

With small nails driven at the offsets at each station we applied the batten and drew a fair curve. On each of the bottom panels there was a single offset which didn't fit to a fair curve. Since it was on both of the bottom panels we felt confident in omitting it from the curve.

Then Christine set to tracing the shapes of the stem and stern of the kayaks from the plans onto the panels. I had planned to use carbon paper to trace the shape from the plans onto the panels, as I had done in a previous construction. After some consideration we opted to follow the method which was suggested in the manual of driving small nails through the lines of the plans into the wood below.

While Christine was addressing the stem and stern, I was preparing the material that will form the sheer clamps. The plan was to use a few 8ft x 3/4" x 6" boards which could be ripped down to 8ftx3/4"x1" strips and then scarfed to suitable length. Having been emboldened by our previous scarfing work I thought this would be a snap. With said hubris I started out on scarfing the sheer clamps. Somehow on my initial try I managed to make 12 sections, none of which came even close to fitting together. Fortunately there was enough extra that material I was able to trim off the first attempt and try again. This time things went much more smoothly and the glue is setting on the scarfed sheer clamps as I write this.


Next time we should be ready to cut the panels out and glue them to the sheer clamps. CLC suggests using a table saw to cut out the panels, but this seems a bit risky to me given the curves involved. We will probably use the slower but safer reciprocating saw for the job.