Over the last few months, we built a new tandem canoe under a tarp in the backyard. It has been an interesting process plagued with problems, such as humidity and bugs, that we wouldn’t experience in a controlled environment. But, despite all the problems, we managed to get to the point where we could test [...]
PaddlingLight offers a significant number of historic canoe and kayak plans and several original designs. In the past, those free kayak plans and free canoe plans came as a drawing on one sheet of paper. The plans showed the stations at 1-foot intervals with the stems drawn over the station. Only my commercial plans and [...]
The Siskiwit LV sea kayak is an all-around, mid-sized, British-style sea kayak designed to maintain the playfulness of a 16-foot kayak but yield the speed and tracking of an 18-foot sea kayak. The sea kayak plans are designed for wood strip or cedar strip construction. I’ll add questions as I’m asked. 1) Does the rear [...]
Because the seat in a solo canoe is centered in the boat, you can’t permanently mount a yoke there. I’ve seen all sorts of solutions to the problem, such as removable clamp-on yokes, magnet holding yokes, yokes held on with bungee cords, special clamping systems for yokes and many more. It seems like everyone’s inner [...]
Recently, a friend turned me onto a sideburner alcohol stove that he bought for camping. It was built from two aluminum beer bottles. The big advantage, he said, was that the stove acts as its own pot stand. One thing that I don’t like is using fiddly pot stands that are common when using homemade [...]
Shortly after I published the plans for the 1894 Unalaska Baidarka, Bill Samson wrote me about his skin-on-frame replica of the boat. He said that he worked from a pre-publication survey from master kayak draftsman Harvey Golden, author of Kayaks of Greenland: The History and Development of the Greenlandic Hunting Kayak, 1600-2000. Golden’s survey differs [...]
I like working with my hands. When doing so, my mind tends to slip into the present and errant thoughts subside. I view this as good and practicing this state helps me focus during daily routines. When I’m not using my hands to create something, I get tense and nervous. I’m not sure why this [...]
As a canoeist, I’m always looking for a place to stash a map, water bottle, or my compass. On days with scattered showers, I want a place to store my rain jacket that I can quickly get to it. In the past, I’ve just stored stuff in the bilge of the canoe, which isn’t ideal–items [...]
Since I built a Northwoods canoe paddle in a North House Folk School class, it has decorated the corner of my living room. Serving as decoration, I always thought that it needed a design painted onto it–if I’m only using it for decoration, why not. For awhile now, I’ve been following Murat’s Paddle Making (and [...]
![hansel_bryan_070416-072[1]](http://www.paddlinglight.com/pl/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/hansel_bryan_070416-0721-150x150.jpg "Permalink to Canoe and Kayak Building Resources")
Paddlinglight.com began as a place to distribute my wilderness philosophy, show off my kayak and canoe building logs, provide boat information, and get my free canoe and kayak plans online. Since it’s inception, Paddlinglight.com grew far bigger than I expected, and the most popular articles on the site have consistently been about boat building. For [...]
![14966_1d_edited[1]](http://www.paddlinglight.com/pl/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/14966_1d_edited1-150x150.jpg "Permalink to Print Your Own NOAA Charts")
Printing your own NOAA Marine Charts is easy, produces a map exactly the size needed, and provides exactly the coverage needed. These are a few of the reasons to print your own, but equally compelling is that at 36″ to 60″, commercially produced NOAA Marine Charts are too big for practical use in a sea [...]
Description: The Siskiwit Bay MC is all-around fast mid-sized British-style touring kayak designed for plywood building. This kayak suits a medium to heavy paddler looking for good initial stability and with increased flare above the waterline lots of secondary stability. As the water gets rougher, this kayak feels more stable. It’s a fast design slightly [...]
Considering how restricted the seating actually is in the average cruising kayak, it’d better be comfortable. Hours of being jammed in an uncomfortable cockpit is no one’s idea of fun – cramped muscles, hard-spot aches, and that pins-and-needles feeling in the legs just purely takes the fun out of a day on the water. For [...]
In the Fall of 2007, I set out to build a new kayak to serve several goals: Build a kayak that fits Ilena, my significant other, better than my Romany. Build a kayak that would be a Greenland style hard chined boat that is as easy or easier to roll than my Romany. Try several [...]
How to Build a Kayak Stand or Canoe Stand for $20 or Less
Building a kayak stand or canoe stand needn’t take long nor cost much. I whipped up this canoe/kayak stand in about one hour, which included the run to the lumberyard to buy supplies. It packs down small enough to fit in the trunk of a small car, and it’s sturdy enough to support a boat [...]