Pulling Wires

Now after I have spent all of that time putting the wires in and twisting them... It took about two hours to pull them all out. The hull is now ready for sanding and final fairing, with any luck I will be able to put the fiberglass on this weekend... but Easter might get in the way.
I did spend a bit of time yesterday thinking about navigation lights, hard wired vrs small battery operated. I still don't know what way to go, but if I can find something reasonably priced I might lean that way.

time spent thus far... 43 hrs

Filling in

Spent another hour last night filling in the gaps between the panels with epoxy and wood flour. I didn't realize I had so many, in fact it was pretty discouraging. But not to worry, the paint guy will fix it up.
I finally made a decision on the rudder issue. There are a lot of nice commercial kits available but they come with a nice price. I could build the whole thing from scratch but time is becoming an issue. I settled for purchasing rotating foot pegs for the aft seat and a rigging kit from Duckworks Boat Building supply. I plan on building the rudder and mounts, this should save me a few bucks and it should look pretty nice.

Hull glue up

Spent a couple of hours tweaking the hull and trying to get it perfect. I got it flipped over with a little help and squirted epoxy into all of the seams. One of the things i noticed while working on it, is that the  stems really suck. i think once i get the hull fiber glassed and the end pours in place, i will cut off the stems and replace with a single piece of hardwood and carve it to fit. i just don't like the look of the plywood stems. I have also decided that this boat is going to get a paint job. The quality of the plywood is just not good enough to clear coat and  there area a lot of tear-outs from drilling all of the holes.

so here is my idea of a fun paint job. and if anyone has ideas for other graphics like a sea turtle or orka or something that has to do with a "mother-ship" let me know.

 

time spent thus far... 40

We have Hull

About the only nice thing I can say about this weekend’s blizzard is that I got about 4 hours to spend on the kayak. The rest of the time is spent on Etsy projects and shoveling and shoveling and shoveling. As you can see in the pictures I have managed to get the rest of the hull pieces wired together. The hull is starting to look pretty good, and I am surprised at how wide this thing is. I bet you could load a lot of stuff in this thing for an extended trip for two. I still need to tweak the wires and tighten up some areas and trim some pieces to get a tighter fit. Then the final wires on the temporary supports. After that, I will attach a couple of scrap pieces t the supports and flip it over in preparation for epoxy. So the time spent thus far brings us up to....37 hours... just not in a row.

Interruptions

Not all interruptions are bad. Yesterday I had to fill a quick ship order of wooden toys to send to Manhattan Kansas. That's the stuff that funds the kayak project. If the kayaks paid for themselves I would be tempted to turn this into a business and then it wouldn't be fun anymore..

Weekend Progress

I did manage to spend some quality time in the shop this weekend. The stitching has begun. It has taken a little more time than I anticipated to get the hang of the best way to put the wires in and twisted tight. I am using construction wire instead of the recommended copper wire, to save a few bucks, but I'm paying for it in time. The other little glitch I ran into was the temporary frames, they didn't fit. Not only did they not fit, but were so far off I had to start over and plot them out again. Apparently when I put the numbers in the computer to print out the shapes I messed up the scale factor and ended up close but no cigar. Just goes to prove that doing some things by hand pays off.

I added 8 hrs to the project this weekend, which brings us up to 33 hrs so far. The lake still has over two feet of ice on it still, so I have a little more time...