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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Take care of the ounces and the pounds will take care of themselves, is Jay Morrison’s motto. Learn how Jay utilized this moto and developed new techniques to build a Wilderness-Tripping-Tough cedar strip canoe weighing 35 pounds.
I stood looking up at the kayak, a plastic Dagger Magellan, inside of our newest yet unopened store in the middle of Iowa. With the sunlight beaming through the sunroof and hitting the plastic of the kayak, which was standing on its end, I could see a small clear flaw. When the rep showed up, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Those Little Set Backs 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, [...]
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 [...]
A perfect kayak not only is one that performs perfectly in all the aspects that you desire, but one that you are building and have designed can only be perfect if everything goes correctly, the shape ends up as you wanted it, and then when finished it performs better than anything else that you’ve paddle. [...]
Free Canoe Plan – Modern Malecite St. John River Canoe
This cedar canoe drawing is taken from Edwin Adney and Howard Chapelle’s The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America–it appears on page 79. Adney surveyed the original in 1895. He notes that the boat shows moderate sheer and low ends. For this set of free plans, I left the station shape and stem [...]