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Building Ken Taylor 1959 Kayak – the Igdlorssuit
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 ideas for a kayak build that I haven’t tried yet. Glass hatch recesses. Glass fitting recesses. Dyeing the wood. And a few other. Generally to improve my building and glassing abilities during a quick build. Reproduce a historic kayak in cedar strip construction. Build another day boat with a different feel than my Romany and…
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Building the Ken Taylor Igdlorssuit Kayak
Gathering Supplies (2:30 Hours) The biggest show stopper for most new kayak and canoe builders is the gathering supply step. Having to decide exactly what materials to buy, where to find the best deal, and how to get everything together in the same location at the right time is complicated. For this kayak, I’m using left over glass from RAKA. I’m using 6 ounce E-glass on the outside and 5 ounce tight-weave E-glass on the inside. The open weave 6 ounce will wet-out more clearly than the tight weave. The epoxy is from US Composites. The dye is from Solar-Lux via Woodcraft.com. It is Blood Red. I’m using KajakSport hatches,…
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Building Ken Taylor 1959 Kayak – the Igdlorssuit – Part Three
Fair Inside (4 Hours) After the kayak is lifted off the forms, it’s time to fair the inside. This kayak is mainly flat on the inside, so fair is easily accomplished using a block plane, hobbyist plane, and a flat surform tool. A Convex surform can be used on the concave sections of the hull. The key point to watch for while using these tools, is use them only to take of the high edges of the strips. After the edges are taken off, change over to sand paper. A rough grit like 40 or 60 will quickly smooth the surface. This can be finished off up to 80 grit…
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Building Ken Taylor 1959 Kayak – the Igdlorssuit – Part Four
Cockpit Coaming (8 Hours) There are many methods of building a cockpit coaming and making a carbon fiber coaming is certainly one of the hardest, but it is an achievable project for the home builder. I like to build mine in four steps. The first step is to make the foam mold that will be used to produce the coaming. Make sure that your opening is sanded smoothly and looks fair. Check this fairing with the cockpit cutout template used to make the recess. Any type of foam can be used to form a coaming, but I used expanding spray foam, because it was what I could get in town.…
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Building Ken Taylor 1959 Kayak – the Igdlorssuit – Part Five
Control Box – 1 Hours The control box for the skeg is built much the same way as the deck fittings. A four and a half inch slot is cut into the hull. It’s located near the center of the coaming. A foam mold is inserted into the slot and covered with paste wax and mold release. Then thickened epoxy is used to round the corners and 5 layers of 3.2 ounce tight weave glass is used to lay-up the control box. After the box is finished, drill a hole to insert the tubing. I covered the hull around the skeg control box with packing tape, so I would be…
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How to Make a Fiberglass Skeg
A skeg is an effective tool that can help control a kayak in difficult conditions. In quartering wind and waves, it can be a godsend. For the average backyard builder, commercial skegs tend to be expensive and most backyard builders will have the skills to fabricate their own. When looking at skeg options, I’ve never been able to find a wooden one that satisfied my sense of durability and simplicity. So, I set out to make a fiberglass skeg that would work well in a wooden kayak. Below you’ll find the steps that I took. Come up with the size and shape of the skeg that you want to build.…
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A Paddle with a Twist: Making a Feathered Kayak Paddle
The main problem homebuilders face when trying to build a feathered kayak paddle is how to make the feather. Most builders either buy an adjustable ferrule that allows several different angles of feathering for the paddle or they build a scarfing jig that allows them to cut the shaft at an angle to give the proper feather and later they glue the two pieces together. The third method, which is the one that I like, involves twisting a multiple laminates to the feathered angle and holding them in place on a building form while the glue dries. This article describes the third method. Choosing Materials Tools Needed: 12 to…
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Easy Aluminum Fittings For a Sailing Canoe
Canoe sailing enthusiast Charles E. Campbell describes an easy method of making aluminum fittings for a sailing canoe. These specialized fittings are hard to find, but even harder to find is any information on how to make the fittings yourself. Nessmuking is proud to host this informative article.
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Vacuum Bagging Techniques for Canoes and Kayaks
I’m going to assume, for the purposes of brevity, that we’re working with a finished, female mold, which is coated and sealed to the point of being airtight. It is easy to vacuum bag over a male mold, as well; the technique is identical. I’ll also assume that the mold has a peripheral flange (a sealed surface, not part of the functional mold surface, running the perimeter of the mold). If you’re working on a mold with no flange, vacuum bagging is possible, but you will still need an area, continuous with the mold-laminating surface, to seal to. If your mold is not airtight, I’ll make a note about that…
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Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Two
In the last installment of Building a Perfect Kayak, I laid out the design criteria for my new kayak and ran into some software problems. Mainly, with the software that I’m using, I couldn’t export rounded stations to build the forms for the kayak. Because Hulls, the boat design program I used, is made to produce plywood panels, it lacked the features needed to accomplish these rounded stations, so I downloaded and tried a program called Sketch-Up. Kayak Forms First, for those readers that haven’t built a canoe or kayak yet, I should state exactly what the forms are. Forms, or stations, are simply the cross sectional shape of a…
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Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Three
If you remember from the previous article, I had just figured out a way to output forms from Hulls by using an extra chine above the design of the kayak. This extra chine gave me a common point in all the forms, and with the click of two buttons provided me with perfectly aligned offsets to plot on paper (albeit paper which looks like a brown paper bag, because I’m unable to buy white roll or tracing paper in Grand Marais, MN. I can’t wait to see my wood choices or maybe wood choice. Pine looks okay, right?) After I figured this out, I charted the Righting/Heeling Moments for the…
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Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Four
With the design steps over, I moved on to figuring out what wood to build this craft with, but, first, I fired off an email to Gregg Carlson suggesting a few improvements for his excellent program, Hulls. I suggested that he should have the program calculate the Block and Mid-ship Coefficients, which would help simplify the process for inputting the data into KAPER. He promptly wrote me back, and mentioned that he was thinking about setting up a project on Source Forge, and that he had been thinking about adding a feature to Hulls that would round the forms for strip building. I’m crossing my fingers, and if you have…
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Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Five
Background Way back in episode two, I explained about station forms and what they are used for, and I mentioned the strong back. If you don’t remember all that dribble then you may want to head back there for review, because in this episode they are the main character. Attempt One So, after I had finished milling the strips I went to the local lumber store and picked up a couple sheets of 1/2″ CDX plywood (BTW, including labor after this episode my kayak costs $593.76, so far.) The forms of the kayak are laid out on this CDX plywood and then cut out and aligned on the strong back.…
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Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Six
Those Little Setbacks in Boat Building My old strong back was beautiful. Built from some of the best 16′ 2x8s I’ve ever seen, and topped with a lovely almost clear 16′ 1×6, the strong back was straight true, and had proven it on several canoes. But as all great things come to an end, my strong back ended its life on a burn pile in the woods somewhere. I gave it away before moving to Minnesota, and they left it in the rain and the snow, and by spring, it was done. Firewood it became. My current strong back, unlike my old one, is a hunk of junk. Somehow, somewhere,…
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Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Seven
Having finished the bottom of the kayak, I flipped it over and for the first time got to see – I mean really see – my kayak. It was a stunning moment. Not only did the stems look true to each other and not twisted (I guess all the work I did beating the heck out of my strong back worked,) but also the shape and rise of the sheer line was fair and beautiful. I quickly cleaned up the shop and got the tape measure out. The first and only measurement I took was from the rear deck, which is much higher than I had hoped, so I’ll have…