Day 1

Well... day 1 is a bit of a misnomer.  I have been thinking about this project since 27th December 2007.  That was the date of the completion of my first serious Sea Kayak expedition.  Nothing huge.  Just out for a couple of days with Mike, one of the son-in-laws.  I did not drown him.  :-) I did however come back with a desire to 'do this again'.  First things first though.... I needed a kayak.  So, instead of doing the sensible thing and just buying one, second hand, I decided to build the one I would paddle.  

For the last year I dreamed about a beautiful, smooth Strip Built kayak.  My only problem was lack of space.  I needed a garage and one was not to be had.  Then two planets came into alignment.  The first was that, I decided to take time out from work in order to build, paddle and bike.  (Call it a holiday or time out what ever.  I have some serious plans to achieve so significantly crazy things over the next few months....)  The second is that a chance(ish) email correspondence stream in a Kiwi Kayak building news group expounded the virtues of Stitch on Frame Kayaks.   WOWOWWOW.  I suddenly saw that I could build my kayak, quickly, and at low cost.  Good fortune smiled, and after much googling, I found  http://www.yostwerks.com/DesignsMenuWood.html and http://www.nessmuking.com/articles/building-a-nikumi/.  It was enough.  I had the pictures and I had the offsets and I had a blow by blow account of building one.  I was ready (well... after much thinking and reading and churning over).

So came Day 1.

To be honest, I was apprehensive.  This whole "lets go building boats" thing was new to me.  In addition I have no tools (they are up with the rest of the whanau in Tauranga).  Plus I needed to keep the cost as low as possible.  However at 8:30 am I was seen heading to the building supplies outfit to get the wood.  

My plan was to build the frame in Ceder but being the Christmas holidays, the Ceder shop was shut.  So... Plan B.... I would build the frame in Radiata Pine.  Sandy Ferguson said it would work out OK.  Tony Calvert also used pine for his Cunningham.  So I decided that pine was fine and it would all work out.

I also needed to build a Strongback and again googled to find this site.  

So, come noon, I was back home with wood for the Strongback and kayak plus a host of other necessary tools and things.  It is a dangerous thing to let a bloke alone in a huge hardware depot but I can assure you I only came out with the minimum necessary.  :-)

So.... what was accomplished you ask???

1. The Strongback was built.  I reckon it will be pretty stable though the timbers still need to dry a bit.

2. I drew all the offsets for the ply profiles, onto 17mm ply.  Why 17mm ply?  Cuz that is what they had.

Today I accomplished my targets.  Tomorrow I will cut the profiles, position them on the Strongback and (with luck) string up the chines, keelson and gunwales just to see what it looks like.  :-)

Only one thing concerns me.  Just looking at the timbers I have a feeling that the kayak may end up a bit sloppy.  I have a plan, if it is but will not announce it yet pending the problem occuring.  :-).

There is way more wood in the Strongback than in the kayak.  I used two (40mm thick plywood beams and a 160x25 rough sawn timber to construct the Strongback.  The whole thing is screwed together at about 300 mm centres.  (apologies of any Americans, Laberians and Myanmarians reading this blog.  We do metric.  :-)  )

The Strongback is complete.  I also blocked between the beams to provide additional laterial stability.  I am picking that this construction will be stable.

My wildly enthusiastic audience!!!!.  No... she is not an origional Inuit though perhaps almost as old.  She did however offer to help a number of times.  Perhaps I should have agreed.  :-)