Coming soon

A post featuring pictures and stories from the Sitka to Glacier Bay kayak trip soon to come.  In the meantime, here are a few pictures.

Gone Kayaking

Hi.  Today I am leaving on a kayaking trip with 3 other friends.  I was hoping to finish building my kayak and even have time to test it out but things just didn't go as quickly as a procrastinating optimist would expect them to.  So... I was approaching the fiberglass step, I got all ready for it... but then it was clear that I would be late and left behind from the trip.  After the trip I will go visit family in Idaho and see my sister get married.  Then I will return to Sitka, find some kind of job and finish the kayak.

Ttyl!

Building the cockpit

A slideshow

Another picture

It's pretty :)

Cockpit time

I'm letting some glue dry and then I'm gonna cut-out the spot for the cockpit.

Happy Easter!

Deck is coming along.

Flipped

Hull done, boat flipped. Cleaning at the moment.

Deck coming up

Yesterday was productive, and I even finished my taxes yesterday.  I'm getting much more efficient.  Today I am hoping to be productive, too.

More bottom

The two strips down the middle of the bottom were the hardest to prepare.  The other hardest spot is the little ones closing in the gap.  I actually steamed one of the strips to get it to bend. 

Getting close to the bottom

It's difficult getting some of these strips on!  I'm getting close to the bottom part though, then I'll get to work on the deck.  I'm getting better but it takes a lot of my patience.

The hard part is getting the strip to twist and getting it to lay against the forms.  Even when using staples and/or a finish nail it is hard to get it to go in place.  When you think you've got one spot secure and you go to work down the rest of the strip the beginning spot will come undone!

April 07 - 7 Strips

I got a late start today, but I'm planning on getting quite a bit done.  I'm hoping the speed will pick up too. =)

April 06 - 4 Strips On

The sheer line strips were the toughest.  I managed to get them to follow the sharp curve at the ends.  While putting on the next strips the first ones kept popping out, that was pretty frustrating.  I substituted this afternoon at the alternative school.  I managed to get something done though.  I will try to do two more tonight, I've got a social event though first.

Long Time A Comin'

I've finally finished all the prep work and have begun putting the kayak together.  Lots of things had to be done before I even started building the kayak.

At Dan's house I borrowed some of his tools and he helped me get set up.  I cut the planks into 3/8" strips on the table saw.
Then, Dan and I were running the strips through the planer and it broke, the rollers were jammed and nothing was getting through.  So I took it in hopes of fixing it.
The strips sat awhile.  I took the planer apart, found the broken sprocket, it looked porous so I thought I'd give it a shot and super-glue it.  One board went through, but then it broke on the second one.  Online the specific sprocket was back-ordered till April.  A couple weeks went by and my friend Greg, a construction professor over at UAS, offered to help and said I could use the planer at the university.  Three days of planing in between 3:30 and 5:00 pm then I had 192 1/4" thick Western Red Cedar strips at twelve feet long and 3/4" wide.

The next step was to put a bead and cove on them.
I had my router bits all ready.  

So with the router bits, and thanks to Uncle Doug - a nice router, and thanks to Dan - a router table, and two days of full-on routering my strips were ready.

This is the router table setup.  The featherboards make the job very easy.  The strip has no way to stray or kick-back.

Then I had a few things to do to get the forms lined up and secured.  And there's tape that goes around any spot where glue might adhere the strips to the forms.  You don't want it to be too difficult to get the kayak and the forms separated.

Getting everything lined up properly proved to be much more difficult than I anticipated also.

The two sheer strips went on the other day.  Now I finally feel like the kayak is being built.  I'm going to post a picture everyday to show progress because hopefully it goes really quickly now.


In this post I would like to thank Karen for the place to work, Doug for the router, Dan for the use of the table saw, router table, planer, help with doing some of the work and a couple of tools that I borrowed, Jasper for the tools I've borrowed, and Greg for letting me use the planer at the university and help transporting the strips.

Happy New Year!

I recently played at the Monthly Grind which was themed as the "Bob" grind. All the performers played "Bob" songs and everyone was named "Bob" for the night. (Everyone was given a name tag with "Bob" written on it.) 

Performers could play any Bob-related songs, i.e. Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Bob Seeger, Led Zeppelin (because of Robert Plant), etc. I didn't feel like going with anyone other than the obvious, Bob Dylan, so I played two of his songs.  I was the last act! That surprised me. I was very nervous, too. Here are the videos!