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.