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.