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.

Before leaving the shop, I assembled a panel from four of the strips.  I know it's a tiny little thing, but I just had to see how it went together.  The next morning, I grabbed my handy new bench plane and shaved it down.  There's something immensely satisfying about watching impossibly thin sheets of wood emerge from the plane.  After a couple of quick passes with sandpaper, I had an idea what the final kayak would look like.