Dead-end

Well, my goal to have the kayak done by the end of the summer has come and gone.  I ended up rebuilding the entire bow section, as a combination of little (1/16") errors added up to a significant error (3/8") that I just couldn't live with.  After ignoring the project for a few weeks, I rebuild the bow and was happy with the results.

I now have the forms and stems perfectly aligned and all of my clamps and jigs ready.  Next, I cut up all of the boards.  Even after proofing the first dozen in the run, I somehow ended up with planks that were 1/32" too thin.  I know it doesn't sound like much, but that leaves the faintest feather edge on the cove that just doesn't glue well.  An entire run is now kindling.  Fortunately, I didn't have to buy the wood.  Unfortunately, my free pile just got that much smaller.

My new goal is to get the planks cut and sorted before the rains start.  If you're reading this, please encourage me a little!

Lessons Learned

The trickiest thing we did this weekend was steam bend the stems.  The trial run that I did with the oak turned out okay, with just a little bit of splitting.  When I bent the mahogany, the outer piece split at the tightest part of the turn.  I thought perhaps the wood was too dry, so I looked for a place to soak it overnight that wouldn't merit the disapproval of my family.  That ruled out the sink, bath and washing machine.  I thought about the fish pond, but was pretty certain that my wood would get pitched into the forest without a second thought by the fishkeeper.  I settled on the filter pond.  Tomorrow I will try to re-bend the stems.

After the first run of planking dried, I tried my hand at planing it down.  First of all, having the molds only loosely clamped in place didn't help things-- It was moving all over the place!  I also learned the importance of machining the planks for edge grain.  The boards with face grain were tearing out like crazy!

The final lesson of the day was that I can only do about four planks at a time.  Towards the top of the run, I wasn't getting enough clamping pressure and the boards didn't seat completely.  You don't see it at first, but when you start to plane past the edges of the cove, big gaps start to appear.

All in all, I'm not upset.  I fully expected things to go wrong.  The whole point of this exercise was to find out what would fail and how we could improve on it later.

It looks like a kayak!

This weekend brought me to a point where a lot happened.  It started with Steve Killing, the designer of the Venture 14 that I am building, e-mailed me not only confirmation of the fixes that I needed, but a complete markup of my CAD file, leaving no doubts in my mind.  Thank you, Steve!  I finished the the form blocks, mold extensions, and clamped everything into place.  This was actually a silly thing to do because the building form is not level and needs to be moved anyway.  Still, I just had to see what it would look like!

Next, my friend Todd came over and we walked through a lot of the steps as practice.  I had a number of planks that I messed up on in the first trial runs.  After making up a pile of clamping jigs, we assembled a small section to learn about all of the things that could go wrong.  I'm glad I did this, because there are a lot of things I want to change, plus working without the need for perfection makes it much more enjoyable.  I know now that I need a lot more C-clamps (sorry, Heidi), that knife edges on my coves truly are bad, and that fitting everything to the stem is not going to be a lot of fun (we sort of skipped that step!).  Although completely rough, I can see how pretty this is going to be when I'm done!

One thing that I've always wanted to do, but never tackled is steam-bending wood.  Since it is a requirement for this project, it was time to learn.  Rather than wasting precious stock for practice, I grabbed a couple of planks of oak flooring that I had (thank you, Dan Wood) and cut it to size.  After 15 minutes in a scrap drain pipe with an old Bissell steamer, we gave it a try.  It thought, no way is this thing going to bend, but it did.  Immediately, thoughts of all the projects I could use bent wood in came to mind.

After Todd left, I found the wood that I would use for the actual Kayak, some scrap CVG fir for the inner stems and what I think might be mahogany that I found for the outer stems.  The bow stem bent into place very nicely.  The contrast in colors between the fir and mahogany is beautiful!  It will be a nice touch to the finished product.  The stern stem, however, was a challenge.  I tried bending that alone-- big mistake!  With less than a minute to bend and clamp the wood and only two hands to accomplish that with, it failed miserably, with clamps and wood strips strewn hither and yon.  Fortunately, my wife and son saved me.  With six hands, the job was completed successfully.  Although there is a bit of splintering on one board, I think I can save it when the boat is finished out.

Ready to Build

I spent this week resolving the error I discovered in my plans.  At first, I tried the builder's forum at Bear Mountain Kayaks.  Unfortunately, it seems that most people have purchased to full-size prints, and didn't experience that stray point I found.  I got an e-mail back from Joan of Bear Mountain Kayaks, and she forwarded my plea to the boat's designer, Steve Killing.  Most of me expected to get blown off, or, at the very least, a terse response with minimal assistance.  Instead, he took my drawings and overlaid his originals showing where the corrections needed to be made.  Now I have a complete, accurate set of drawings.
Drawings in hand, I finally put them down on the plywood molds.  Some builders suggest transferring the lines to the wood, but I thought, why not just glue them down?  After lunch at the in-laws, I set about cutting the forms, ready to mount up tomorrow.

By the time I finally got to the bandsaw to cut the forms, I was a bit tired.  I already tore through two of the papers by being too aggressive with the jigsaw.  Rather than risk a mistake, I cut wide and cleaned up the forms with a disc sander.  It actually worked better this way, as the sander left a smoother edge than the bandsaw-- less chance of splinters later.

Designing and Preparation

I spent the weekend cleaning out half of the garage.  I don't know why I call it a garage.  It never sees a car unless it's being worked on.  I was a little nervous at first, that I would have no room left, but it didn't turn out that bad.  With a 16' x 4' space clear, I built the strongback upon which the kayak will be built.  I began wishing I had splurged for a higher grade plywood, as the CDX sheeting I used wanted to warp all over the place.  I spent a couple of hours just leveling, shimming, leveling, lasering, shimming, and tweaking it into a position that I hope will be straight.  Until I start kayak construction, it makes a really nice workbench.  Jason and I actually used it to fix a couple of chairs, so it isn't a complete waste of space.

Next, I decided to save myself a hundred bucks and lay out my own station molds.  Those are the "ribs" that make the shape of the kayak.  It was pretty easy to translate the offset dimensions from the book into the CAD program and Office Depot was able to print them full-size.  Most of the people that I showed the plans to thought it wouldn't be wide enough for their derrière.  Too late.


Unfortunately, I found a flaw in the drawings.  I'm at a standstill until I hear back from the nice people at Bear Mountain Kayaks.

First Steps: Prototyping

It's time to begin construction of my kayak.  Before getting halfway into the build and realizing I've completely bodged something, I'm going to walk through the steps in small scale.  It begins with a pile of redwood cedar fencing that I acquired.  Ideally, I'd source #1 CVG redwood in 16' lengths, but that costs considerably more than the $0.00 that I paid for this pile.  I'll have to do a lot more end splicing, but for the first time through, I won't have to worry about the costs of the mistakes that I will certainly make.

The very first step was interrupted when my table saw did its best to impersonate a 747 at full-throttle take-off.  After a little role playing, with myself, I knew what I had to do.

Me:  Hello, is the doctor in?

Nurse:  Why yes.  Is that a saw blade embedded in your forehead?

Me:  Yes.  It hurts a little.

Nurse:  You should have changed the bearings.

Me:  I know.

Two days and a whopping $7.34 later, the saw was repaired and ready for business.  As an added bonus, I finally got the depth adjustment to work smoothly!

Four fence boards yielded a pile of little planks.  Unfortunately, most of them had knots and would be unusable in the final product, but I'm using them for the testing part.

I realized right away that it is difficult to cut 1/4" strips accurately.  When I do the run for the actual kayak, I'll oversize them and run them through the planer.  That will cut down on the final finishing steps.The part that I have been waiting for is the bead and cove.  It took me a while to figure out a router table setup that would work consistently.  The key was in the little finger boards to hold the plank down as it goes through.  Using actual fingers is highly discouraged, so a couple pieces of oak shaped just right did the trick.  It took me a couple of hours to shape the planks from the four boards that I cut.

The Kayak: Blame it on Geocaching

My family loves to Geocache.  It's a great way to get out and find parts of the world you might not otherwise have known about.  Whether it's wandering around Reno trying to pass time not in a casino, or running down the road just to chalk up another find, it keeps us busy.  Often, in a fit of boredom, we'll pile into the car in the middle of the night to find obscure caches around town.  On one such trip, a particular cache was eluding us... until we read the description and realized it was only accessible by water.  "We need a boat," my wife told me.

Now, when your wife tells you that you need a boat, this is very serious business!

We had a boat once.  It was a rather old, rather cumbersome cabin cruiser built sometime around the time my parents were born.  We took it out twice.  Given what I put into it, each trip cost in the hundreds of dollars-- certainly not sound financial planning.

No, for this adventure, we're talking something along the lines of a kayak or canoe.

We also had a kayak.  My son and I thought it would be a lot of fun.  And it was.  Unfortunately, the particular model that we chose weighed about as much as my car.  It was cheap; that's why we bought it.  As much fun as it was in the water, its weight proved too much and we got rid of it.  Fortunately I broke even this time!

It wasn't until I paddled around in my friend Todd's kayak that I knew what we needed.  Something light.  Something rather short.  Something we could conceivably get two of on a car.

Of course, being me, I couldn't possibly purchase such an item when I could build one.  After a bit of research, I settled on the idea of a wood strip kayak.  I added the tools I'd need to my Christmas and waited.

At one point in the research process, my wife sat beside me, looking at my materials, plans and lists and said something like, "Oh, you're serious."  The following conversation basically amounted to a confession that she thought I was blowing a bunch of smoke again.  Do I really do that?

My Christmas stocking revealed a pair of router bits, a spoke shave, a block plane and a dozuki.  It was official.  The boatbuilding will begin!

Follow my posts as I update the progress of my build.  My goal for completion is when school lets out!