Finishing One Side

Starting to overlap the internal stem part.

Nearly stripped full to midline.




Cut and planed down internal stem with strips attached. Been wanting to clean that up for a long time.


Finally, got to cut the overhanging ends to make a straight midline. Now for the hard part of fitting the ends of the other stips to the right angle.

More Strips, more clamps

Started using more clamps since they're a bit faster than masking tape. The quick grip ones are nice since you can place them with one hand. The bar clamps are only good until the strips start making the curve to the bottom of the boat.






Here's a picture of the bow. The internal stem is nearly fully stripped. From here on out I will need to strip only one side until I cross over the midline.

Stripping the Hull sides

The wood strips that came with the kit have a cove and bead on either side of the length of the strips. That just means that the edge is either concave or convex. So when you glue the edges together, it makes a better fit. And as the strips have to curve around the boat the cove can rotate on the bead.

Darryl, a friend I met at the Redfish Kayak shop in Port Townsend, sent me a bunch of home made clampy dealies. They arent really clamps as much as pieces of wood that hold the strips down on the other strip, and against the stations. They're pretty important if you are going to make the kayak without staples.


The wood clampy dealies do a decent job of holding the strips down, but I think using masking tape does a better job of holding more tension.

The ends of the kayak are upswept, so the strips have to bend a bit. Its a bit harder to keep those parts of the strip in place. Gotta use more clamps and tape.

Another thing I found out about the ends, bow and stern, is that the cedar strips want to pull up on the internal stem to become straight again. Since the internal stem isn't really anchored down at the furthest end, it will start to pull away from the form. I tried to duct tape the internal stem down, but then had to reinforce the duct tape with some staples.

1st Strips!!!

After struggling with the internal stem shape, i finally decided to place the first strip. I used cut paint stirring sticks as little shelves to hold my first strip at the sheer line. Then hot glued the strip to the duct tape covered stations. The ends of the strips were wood glued and clamped to the internal stem.

The easier way to do it is to directly staple the strip to the stations, but that ends up leaving little holes in your kayak. The holes get filled up, but you can still see them.

The first strip helps show any mal alignments in the stations, or so i'm told. I think everything looked okay, so i didn't end up adjusting any of the stations.