Sanding

The instruction book suggests that I start the fairing process with a scraper to knock down edges and remove the glue squeeze out, then spend lots of quality time with a hand plane to create the nice fair curves... I started with the belt sander and the high speed air sander, this is going to take some serious grinding..

More progress

Talk about awesome weekend take 2! The deck has been stripped, after 20 hours of painstaking cutting, fitting, planing, trimming, fitting, swearing, fitting again. I think I have it done. This is not a perfect, museum quality piece.... This is a boat that I will paddle, drop, scrape, bang around in all summer, and its looking pretty dam good too!

still lots to do, next step is the sanding and fairing....... woohoo!

Progress

what a great weekend, it all started Friday night when i replaced the starter on the old motorcycle....... and it worked! after that i spent about 16 hrs working on the deck of the kayak. as you can see there is a bit of a wiggle on the center line, I'm still thinking of a way to fix it without tearing it all apart. but I'm happy with what i have done so far. only 67 days till the SD kayak challenge!

a better day

I did get some quality time in the shop yesterday. I finaly managed to finish up a couple of wood boxes that have been sitting on the bench for awhile. Thanks to the equilizing factor of a great air sander, smooths out all of the mistakes. And now that there is only 85 days to the SD kayak challange, im getting antsy about finishing the boat. I made more cedar strips for the deck and prepaired some more walnut. I still dont know what the final look is going to be, but I feel a design growing somewhere in the back of my head. I think the hardest task I have done yet is fitting the shear strips for the deck. Getting the bevels right and maintaing the twist is a little tough. Once these strips are inplace and solid, the remaining should go pretty quick.

Frustrating

ok some days you just shouldnt go out to the shop. i was attempting to use my plunge router with my dovetail jig and was just making a mess. i should have used the other router with the fixed base, the plunge kept slipping even when locked tight. then to add to the fun, the straight bit decided to slip down making the cut even deeper. the moral of the story is.... use the right tool, and replace that collet when it starts to slip...

To Cold

Its way to cold to be working in the shop today. I dont want to waste the propane to heat it up. So im working on some plans and specs in the house where its nice and warm.

Stripped hull

The hull is stripped, now to move on to the deck. i did the final closure strips with walnut, im thinking it looks pretty cool if you ask me. next step is to flip it over, release the forms and then start on the deck. im still thinking about a pattern for the forward end, but i have to see the shape of the deck first.

Wisdom?

I do believe that a boat takes on some characteristics of its builder during construction…. mine is just a little twisted…..

Still working on it

Another eight hours spent in the workshop, planing, shaping, gluing, clamping and tapering. I now have the deepest respect for those people who build a lot of kayaks. As this is my first build, each piece, each joint is a new skill i don't yet have. work progresses in spurts, sometimes slow, sometimes quickly, but never quick enough.

I have run out of ceder strips again and will have to pick up another board this week.  I am going to fill the final closures on the bottom with walnut, should look cool. I'm not sure what the deck is going to look like, pattern wise. I still have a lot of walnut that I can make smaller strips work with ceder fillers but we will just have to see.

A kayak can truly start you on a journey, even before it gets wet.

134 days till race day

Its tough to get time to warm the shop up to do more work on the kayak. When the temp is down in the stupid range, it takes a lot of propane to keep my fingers working. Anyway im still working on the keel strips, I have the first one almost ready to install, I just need to steam in a little twist for the bow end to get the point right. I figured out that if I cut out the straightest parts of the warped walnut strips and nail them together, I can run them through the plainer and straighten them out, then I can scarf them together to make the length i need. Its working but slow going...

Keel Strips

I'm working on the Keel strips now, I'm thinking these will be pretty important to keep straight and fitted tightly.

oh yea 140 days till the SD kayak Challenge

Sunday's Update

Ok, so this is not going as fast as i thought it would. 143 days till the SD Kayak challenge and my boat still leaks, big time. slow and steady wins the race right? I have installed the strips up to the chine and am now ready to do the bottom....
i know, i know, im going to take my time and do a good job....

Wensday's update

Didn't get to far on the kayak today, put on two more courses and filled in the bow area. The weather was just to nice to stay inside wile the forecast calls for lots of yuck. so we went fishing for the afternoon and enjoyed some sunshine. to bad i got the truck stuck and spent all my time shoveling....

Tuesdays update

Today I didn't make as much progress as I wanted. Had a couple of distractions and a trip to town to run some errands. Beveling the strips take a little more time than I planned. I am using an old Stanly block plane that has seen better days. The shoe is flat but the iron was dull so I ran it through the grinder just to brighten it up a bit. It has been a long time since I set one of those up so there was a bit of a learning curve. So here I am, three rows up the hull, first two are cedar and the third is walnut. The walnut is a pain because everything is warped badly, I have to straighten and splice a lot.

Here we go...

Ok, things are going good in the shop today. I have taken the week off and am concentrating on the kayak. I spent most of today just cleaning up previous messes and getting things ready for the next project. I did manage to get one sheer strip on, kind of tricky, you need to bevel the connection between the deck and the hull. Looks like I still need to make some adjustments. I am finding that I need more clamps (who doesn't) and one of those fancy pull saws would be cool.

The design is a Great Auk by Nick Schade, who also wrote "the strip-built sea kayak" book i am using for a reference.

Observations

It is difficult to photograph the first real snow of the year with today’s cameras. With the auto focus and flashes the picture never turns out the way you see it. A picture can never capture the quiet, the closeness or the lazy way the big flakes wander to the ground. Defining shadows are washed out and the world is blanketed in soft slumber. The leaves are gone, the grass is gone, and the evidence of human meddling is hidden for another season. The air feels fresh and although the visibility is reduced, the clarity of our surroundings is sharp with contrasting white and black. As the depth increases even the large objects of our daily lives take on new perspective as mounds and shapes change from mundane to fantasy. For a short time the expanse lays undisturbed, free from tracks and smooth from the breeze driven snow, waiting.

Changes

196 days or so until the South Dakota Kayak Challenge. A 72 mile race down the mighty Missouri river between Yankton SD and Sioux City IA....
as of right now..... I'm not ready..

new ideas

im working on a new marketing idea that might be great for our area. ill let you know if it works..

Fall Update

the shop is quiet for a little while, we are putting the yard to bed for the winter. Fixing - painting - caulking - cleaning... all those things that need to be done before ol man winter starts blowing from the north.......soon, i hope, ill have things ready to fire up the tools and start building stuff again. the list of stuff to do is getting longer...

Another Etsy Project

I took on a custom project through Etsy, this lady asked for 100 crafty style 1/2" thick cutouts in various shapes. I do love my bandsaw, its a beautiful thing. I have them all cutout and am now doing the final sanding. Then a shot of primer, drill a hole and off they go..