Internal Stem

The first real building task was laminating the internal and external stems. They are at the ends of the boat. The internal stem is where you attach the strips at the end, and the external stem is there for added support at the upswept ridge of the bottom of the boat.

I was supposed to laminate the stems with unthickened then thickened expoxy. I didn't know what that meant so I asked Joe about it. Unthickened expoxy is the 2:1 mixure without the hardening powder. He said that I didnt even need to use the expoxy since the stems should not see water once glassed. So i went with wood glue.



Here is the internal stem alone, mounted on the form with screws. You can't see it very well, but this piece of wood is actually thin strips of cedar glued together to make a thicker strip of wood, which needed to be bent to the form.

Next I had to shape the internal stem so the end of the strips would lay flat. I didn't really have any idea exactly what that should look like, so Joe had to send me some pictures. It ends up looking kinda like a triange with the top ridge about 1/8th inch.



Here are some pictures of my partially shaped internal stem.







You can see how the unshaped stem is rectangular and the shaped part is angled. At first i tried using a block plane to shape it, but that didn't really take off enough wood. Then I started using a rasp (4 in 1 rasp), which worked much faster. I followed that with some 60 grit sandpaper covering the rasp, then 80 grit for the final shaping. I'm certain there is a faster way, but that's what I did with the tools I had.

(addendum: After working on the internal stem along the way, I ended up mostly using a sturdy box cutter to do the initial shaping then using sand paper to do the finishing touches.)

Starting the Kayak Building

Well here's a few days into it and i think i have my stations all lined up. By the way, i purchased the kit, so Joe already milled all my lumber, cut all my stations, and pretty much packaged up everything i need.

Well that is except the hundreds of dollars i spent on necessary tools. Joe says all you need is a fine japanese pull saw, a block plane, and a orbit sander to build this thing but here's the list of things i bought so far. Granted I started with virtually no tools to begin with.

japanese pull saw
stanley low angle block plane
random orbit sander
japanese waterstone 800/4000 grit combo (for sharpening the block plane blade)
honing guide
waterstone holder
4- in- 1 rasp
320 grit wet/dry sandpaper to flatten waterstone and flat of blade
1/4 inch glass for flat surface
sandpaper: 60, 80, 100, 120, 220
tite bond 2- wood glue
staple gun
t-50 staples
hot glue gun and glue
masonary string/line
t- square
24" leveler
box cutting knife
10 little spring clamps(1 in)
10 med spring clamps (2 in)
8 x 6" bar clamps
jigsaw and blades
cordless drill
driver set
woodscrews
foam brushes
iron (bought at goodwill for steaming wood if needed)
track lighting for my garage
shelving for the wood
arrow shed to clear out the garage

There's still a bunch i need to buy as the project moves along. I'm not working now, so i'm pretty much at lowes daily picking up little things i need.

anyway, here's a picuture of my kayak so far.





Unfortunately, i did not read the addendum to the instruction packet Joe sent. I was supposed to mark the center lines of the blocks that go on the strong back, string a straight line from the two end blocks and screw the blocks into place using the center line on the block and string line.

well i ended up screwing the blocks into place without doing that, which meant that because the strong back is not perfectly straight, I had to move some of the risers over as much as 1/4 inch. Of course the little slots in the risers do not give that much wiggle room, so i ended up using the jig saw to widen the slots. A bit of a pain, and i had to get bigger washers to deal with the bigger slots. Too bad i found that addendum page in another folder now instead of in the beginning.

Clearing the Garage

I actually bought the kayak in late October 2006, knowing that I wouldnt be able to start on it until March 2007. I guess prices were going up in 2007, so I might as well by it before. Well March came and after a couple of weeks of hard work, I'm finally starting to actually work on the Kayak instead of finding ways to store all the crap in my garage.

This is what my garage looked like in September 2006 after getting home from Alaska for a year.

And this is what it looked like 2 days ago when I finally decided it was time to open up the kayak kit.

Besides finding hidden nooks in the garage rafters to shove all our stuff, I also decided on building a shed for tools and such. I was thinking about storing it all in a storage facility, but since its gonna take me over a year to finish the project i figured i might as well spend that money on a shed.

The shed idea ended taking way too much time. First i thought i'd try concrete blocks for a foundation, but it was impossible to get them each level. Then i found out that the shed would be to high with the foundation on the side of the house. I had to find another place for it. What was supposed to be an out of the way structure ended up being a huge eye sore in our back yard.

Before

After

The Vision

I've been thinking about building a kayak for several years now, but have been moving around too much to really actually consider it. Paul, one of my friends in Kodiak, AK, inspired me to try out making a cedar strip kayak. He built a tandem one many years ago. He even used to have a little business making cedar strip canoes in Utah for awhile. Anyway, his Kayak had some incredible curves and was pretty darn fast.

I always thought that i would make a stitch and glue pygmy, but after looking online for a while, I realized that cedar strip was the way to go. So many design options for both function and beauty.

I chose Redfish (http://redfishkayak.com/) mostly because its homebase is near Seattle, but also because of all the good things I heard online about Joe, the owner, and the boats others have made using his plans.

Here are some pictures of the Kayak i'm planning to build.
(I'd be amazed if it even came close to looking like those since i have no real experience with woodworking, nor really building anything of any kind. )


"the silver" is on the bottom, "the springrun" is on the top

Both of these pictures have the "swoop" design, which is what i will probably do, but you can make any type of design on the deck and/or hull when you use cedar strips.