Finished - Officially.

Check out my next project: http://emma-kayak.blogspot.com/

well, i've made the Deck lines now, and checked over the paint job properly.. so now the kayak is officially finished!

Paddling

Two months since I finished it, I finally had time to go out for another paddle...

this time it felt a lot better than last time. The waterline is around the bottom of the gunwhales at the seat, and while it is fairly unstable, it is possible to balance. :P



I paddled for just over an hour, going 1.7 KM and back again, and on the way I rolled over 3 times, and because I haven't practiced rolling back up yet had to get out of it and pull it to shallower water so I could empty out the water and get back in. :P

I'll still paint it, and make deck lines, somewhere down the line, but next weekend I'm planning on going shopping for wood for my gf's kayak. :D

Finished

Well, i did actually finish it and paddle it two weeks ago, but completely forgot to post it here...

the finished boat weighs 17 kg, which is a fair bit more than i expected, but considering that it's mostly made out of pine, and i think the boat varnish i used was fairly heavy too, it's not really unexpected.

so, i carried it down to the water (5 minute walk)



and got in (notice the wetsuit, i knew what i was getting into :P



unfortunately i don't have any pictures of me actually paddling it, as my girlfriend filmed it and forgot to take pictured, i'll probably put the film up later though.

basically, as i got in and pushed out, all went well, and it stayed afloat.
however, it's very high in the water, so i think i've made it a bit too big.
and of course being higher up than expected made it even less stable than expected, so i spent about half an hour floundering around, managing to stay paddling for about 20 metres before tipping to the side and letting in water because i had no chapel or tuuliq.

and of course, on my first paddle i did sink, once it got too full of water to stay up :P

i'm still gonna make some deck lines, and probably paint it red as i don't really like the transparent skin.

Second coat

managed to get an early shift at work today, so i could make it out and buy some more varnish and give the kayak a second coating.

this picture is before i put it on, the first coat of varnish made the skin more transparent than i'd like, and it isn't quite as tight as it was when i skinned it, but it is a lot stiffer, and there were some water beads on it from the rain today so the skin seems waterproof already.



the seam down the middle still looks good, it's more or less straight, and it's narrow and flat.



and, after a second coat of varnish:



overall, i think it looks fantastic, but i'm definetly going to slap a coat of paint on it as the skin is nearly completely transparent.

Skinning and coating!

as you've noticed by now, i don't own my own camera... so unfortunately no pictures of this important and exciting part of the build :<
i will upload pictures when i go out during this week though.

i went out saturday morning, and went to the boat shop, and spoke to the guy there, he figured normal boat varnish should do it, he wasn't sure it would stick to the cloth, but i'm feeling positive. :P
i got one can that's supposed to last something like 14-15 square meters.

i started putting the skin on around 3pm.

at 9 i had stiched up the middle, and twice around the coaming.

i went up the next morning and spent an hour stiching all along the middle seam once more to reinforce it and around the coaming once more (doing the coaming with the dental floss too because i don't have a needle big enough for my lashing thread).

for the stretching, i made a pocket in one end, and pulled all i could on the other end, and marked how far it went, made another pocket there, and pulled it over the end, then i streched it sideways by sewing a large zig-zag pattern and tightening it a couple of times.

then i streched a thread of my lashing material from one end to the other and back, so i had two threads, i cut off the cloth about 5cm past the middle line, and then tucked the cloth in between the lines, and then i started sowing in one end, under the lines, to the masik, and then doing the same from the back end to the back rest.

i didn't have any nails to strech he coaming with, so it's not quite as tight as it could be, but i'd say it's tight enough.

and then i started applying the varnish, using a wide brush, i started with the seams and coaming, applying as much as i could, then did thetop side, and when i flipped it over i realised i'd used half the can of varnish... so in the end, when i ran out of varnish i still hadn't coated the sides, from the chines up to the gunwhales, and the shop i bought the varnish in isn't open on sundays.

luckily the other shop in town was open, so i bought a can of varnish there, though it's a different brand, and likely a different type, but nothing i can do about it, so i just painted it on the last bits, overlapping with the first varnish a bit, and i hope it will work out well.

so hopefully i can trade a couple of evening shifts this week to some earlier shifts so i can go out and put two more coats of varnish on it, and if all goes well i'm hoping to go for a paddle on saturday! :D

pictures!

ok, went a while without access to a camera there, but now i finally managed it. :P

I made the coaming, with a flange all the way around:



it doesn't look too good in the back, but I'll smooth it over when i finish it, i had to put an extra piece of wood on there to hold it together that I'm planning on removing when i stich it together.

The finished frame:




and i think the masik is strong enough even though i cut it out of a straight piece instead of the curved one:


next weekend: skinning! :D

Frame Finished!

I went out last night and put on the forward deck stringer, which means the frame is officially finished.

Work still needing to be done:
Oiling the frame (possibly twice)
Bending the coaming (the ring that will be around my waist)
Sewing on the skin.
Painting the skin to waterproof it.

I will upload some pictures of the finished frame next friday when i go out to oil it.

evening work

I went out again yesterday after work, picked up some more wood on the way, and cut the masik out of a 12x5 cm plank of fir.
It's not as strong as it could be, but it's strong enough for me to be able to stand on it without problems.

I also made the deck ridges behind me and cut the one's in front of me to lenght, but didn't have time to finish them, though I'm considering going out and doing that today so I have the frame finished.

no pictures unfortunately :P

Day 7 and 8

Kind of a slow annoying weekend...

I went out saturday, and made the two arched deck beams with no problems, then I started on the masik with the large curved piece of lumber I'd found.



I've reached the conclusion that it is probably easier to do that with a bandsaw, and that it's practically impossible with a handsaw, as i spent 3 hours working on it, making kerfs and hacking the wood off, and didn't get a proper flat surface, and in the end I think I took too much off it in some places and decided to give up on it.

then I tried putting the skin over the kayak, to make sure it fit.
I clamped it in one end, and pulled it over the kayak, and about 70 cm before reaching the other end the cloth ended...



I've mailed the guy I bought it off and he will send me a new piece on thursday, so it should get here before easter.

Sunday I was planning on getting the plank I intended to make into a second paddle, and use a piece of that for the masik, but when I went out to the hallway where I had it, it was missing...
Apparently someone stole a 2m plank of wood with half of one side chipped off...
And of course the lumberyard is closed on sundays, so I couldn't go buy a new piece either.

In the end I settled for oiling the frame with raw linseed oil and going home.

I went out Sunday, and had a bit of trouble, because i forgot to bring the book.
however, I've read most of it a few times now, and read lots of other blogs, so i forged on.

I messed up the first stem piece I tried I messed up, because I forgot that it had to go all the way to the top of the gunwales, but i could use the piece to make the other stempiece so in the end i got two functional pieces.





I clamped the keel on, and started lashing it.
as i didn't have the book i didn't use the exact lashing method he suggests, and i used a thread that wasn't completely flat (1,4mm thick polyester building line).
but the lashing went fast and painless, there was one point on one chine when i needed fairing blocks on 3 ribs in a row, but apart from that it was no problems.





I also made one of the little blocks that tie together the stemplate and gunwhales, but didn't have time to do the other.




all in all, I think I got a good days work done.



EDIT: Picked upp the cloth at the post office too!

Day 5

I had another go at bending the ribs today.

I cut out 5 pieces, and thinned the ends with a rasp, and cut the ends a bit narrower to fit in the mortises.
While they were in the steam box I prepared the next 5 ribs, this was a lot more efficient than what i did last week with cutting out all the ribs, and then just kinda standing around while they cooked in the steamer.

when i popped the first rib in the jig, it bent perfectly, no cracks, no groans, no places where it just bent 90 degrees instead of curving...
and when i fit it into the mortises it worked great.

I broke 5 or 6 ribs, out of 23, and 3 of them was the 24'th rib which i decided to skip after breaking 3 of it.



there were some minor cracks on 4 or 5 ribs, but i threw some wood glue in and tied it up and it should work fine.



One of the gunwales split a little bit too, but again, some glue and pressure should help, and it was near one of the ends anyways.



Not that much to report... all in all a perfect day. all ribs cut, bent and fitted in about 5 hours.

Also, my skin arrived in the mail, but I didn't find out until the post office closed so I'll get it next weekend when I go out there.

Day 4

Well, I expected to break a lot of wood this weekend...
However, I still expected to be able to make all the ribs with the wood i had. (I even made sure the grain was the right way because i read someone else's blog about that)

Of the 30 or so meters of wood i had, i managed 6 ribs that were... not good enough... but not broken in two...



I had them soaking in water for 4-5 days before bending them, the steam box worked well (scalded my finger quite a lot because i had a hole in my glove), but regardless, they all cracked a little bit when I bent them in the jig, which of course only got worse when I tried to bend them into the mortises.





In total I think I broke near 40 ribs.
I tried steaming them shorter time (10 minutes) and I tried longer (all the way up to 25).
steaming them for longer helped a bit, but they still buckled and cracked rather than bend smoothly.

I think the main problem was the wood. it was very cheap and low quality.
However another problem was that I didn't have the necessary tools to make the thinning near the ends smooth. I just thinned them with a knife, and i saw that more than one of the breaks were in spots where I'd made it a bit too thin with the knife.

As I ran out of wood around 3 I decided I needed to try to get some other wood for my next attempt.
We went to the same place, as the only other place I could possibly get lumber within a 2 hours drive isn't open on sundays.
We found some "List" wood (google translate was not helpful here, baseboard?).
It was 21mmx8mm, and cost 5 Swedish a meter. absolutely perfect!
I bought 21 meters, cut it up to fit in my box, and set it all to soaking.







There's still some diagonal grain here and there, but mostly it looked good, and the wood felt a lot better than the first batch, and i was able to bend this a bit already, so i'm expecting it to get better with soaking and steaming.

We'll have to see, but i may not have the time to go out and give it a try next weekend, so it may get 2 weeks of soaking. :P

Day 3

last week i fit the deck beams in, and attached them with screws.




I started this morning by cutting the ribs to length.



I then spent two and a half hours making sure all the ribs fit into the mortises.
the rounded holes made by the router were a bit too narrow, so i had to make them all a couple of mm wider, and if i do this again i'll definetly get an 8 mm chisel for the short side of the hole.
but in the end i had them all fitted, and made myself a steam box, using an electric kettle for the steam.



it worked fairly well, though it's not too solid, so i had to repair it between every round of steaming.

the bending however... worked fantastically.... bad.



out of 15 i broke 14.
and the 15'th was a bit wonky... but i figured, it was "good enough"...



if i have a chance i'll make a new one for it, but as it looks right now i've only got 7 extra ribs to replace broken one's, which means i'll most likely have to go buy more wood and try again next week, but i'll have to see how tomorrow goes first.

Day 2

I was planning on getting two days work done this weekend, but ended up going away saturday for my grandfathers 90'th birthday.

I did get a bunch of work done sunday, though i had no camera, so no pictures this time :<
i finished off the rib mortises (yay router). though they're a bit narrow, so i have to widen them with a file next weekend.
then i put the gunwales in the forms, and while i was considering wether i should do mortises or dowels for the deck ribs i decided to just be lazy and screw them in.
so i got some 5 cm screws and stuck two in each side of every rib.
it feels very solid, and now the frame is stuck together.
i also ripped the rib material, and will be going out today with a tub to soak them, hoping to get bending this weekend.
work still needing to be done:
bending ribs.
raised deck beams over my legs.
masik.
stemplates.
chines/keel.

i'm hoping to be able to do all this in 2 weekends, and i have mailed the guy who owns www.groenlaender.de to order the nylon cloth.

moving forwards, hopefully i'll have some more pictures and possibly a rib bending video next week :D

day 1!

finally got started on the kayak last sunday.
spent roughly 400 swedish crowns on the wood... and probably over 1000 on various tools (clamps, some sawhorses, a japanese pull saw, the plane i used for the paddle).

I got the wood to my dad's garage, and started cutting out the gunwales, chines and keel.
my gunwales are 22mmx75mm and 4.8 metres long.
i would have preferred them 30 cm longer, but it was the longest they had.
the chines and keel are 22x22 and the same length.

So i got 3 planks that were 22mmx120mm, and got cracking with a circle saw.



I messed up one of the gunwales, the wood cracked where i cut it and took of a large gash that i didn't like the look of.



luckily i had a third, and the broken gunwale could still be used to cut into 2by2's for the chines and keel.

however the wood was cheap, and cheap means there are some knots in it, and my chine broke.



but, in the end, i managed to get just what i needed out of the 3 planks i got.



next up, copying the measurements i made to the gunwales.



and once I had marked out all the locations of the deck beams and ribs, i started drawing the mortises for the ribs.




once i finished drawing them all up, i got the drill out, and started with the tactic of drilling two holes and one in the middle, however the drill ran out of batteries after the first 3 mortises, so i decided to skip ahead a bit in the book and do other things that didn't depend on the rib mortises being cut.

I marked out the sheer, and cut a little bit off one of the gunwales, but decided it was getting too dark to see properly with the little lamp i had so i decided to go home and come back next weekend.


going back out for more building on saturday, and I'm planning on staying out there and working sunday too.
hoping to get all the mortises cut and if i'm lucky maybe all the deck beams cut and fitted.
but, we'll see. should be another update sometime during next week :)

paddleworks!

so, tuesday i went and bought a couple of planks.
4.5x12 CM, and 2½ meters long.
i sawed off the end 25 cm, and marked out the bits i wanted to plane off.

time to get planing! :D

once that was done (roughly 2½ hours of work) it's time to cut out the actual paddle shape.


starting to look like a paddle, time to get the actual shape started.
a good deal of rasping and sandpapering later, it's mostly done.

i'd like to give it a go with my dads sandpaper machine to save some time, but it'll have to wait till next weekend.
but considering i haven't got a kayak yet, it's no real rush.