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!