Kayak building.

This is a blog about my experiences with building kayaks. I am a first time kayak builder, though I have built a few boats before so I am familiar with some of the construction requirements. I am certainly no expert, just a long time learner. The intention is to build several kayaks as I think repetition is often a good teacher. So perhaps if you are engaged in a similar exercise then the posts here might be of some use to you, and if you are then good luck with your endeavour.

For the purpose of ease of reading I have changed the individual dates of the posts so that the run sequentially.

Making Templates

There are tons of plans and demonstrations for kayak building online. What I am looking for is something relatively simple to build, something that will be robust, easy to repair and something that will be useful for carrying enough gear in on long journeys. 

So I have settled on the idea of a sea kayak that can be built using the stitch and glue construction method and after viewing various plans and making many scribbles I have made templates of the various sections I will need to stitch together. 

I first cut them all a little larger than needed and did the fine tuning after. This is because I anticipate mistakes while cutting from an 8 x 4 sheet of plywood and I can plane down the cut outs to their accurate dimensions later. Once I have all the pieces cut correctly I will use a router on the templates to cut the actual mahogany panels. Timber is precious and I would rather make mistakes on ordinary building plywood than on expensive mahogany plywood.

so this is what a kayak looks like if you could unfold it flat.

The Stitch and Glue Method of boat building

I now have the finished panels routed out. and they need assembly. To do this I must stitch them together.

I will try to describe here in detail the stitch and glue method for building small boats.  

The kayaks I am building are assembled from a series of laminated mahogony plankings and these must be tied together before gluing. This is done by drilling tiny holes along the rim of the planking that will be adjacent to its adjoining planking. 

When the planks are laid side by side a copper wire is pushed through and the ends are twisted together. The holes are drilled about 30 to 40 millimeters apart. Here's a few photos of this part of the process, which also shows a very messy workroom.

Here are the twin bottom plantings with the holes drilled out.

Here is what I am using, the copper core of recycled electrical cable.

This is about 2 millimetre diameter.

Each of the holes then has the copper inserted.

Then each of them gets tied. Its important at this stage not to make them two tight.

The planking will be opened like an envelope and if they are too tight the wires will snap.

Once the entire kayak is stitched, and the form is satisfactory the entire structure can be glued. 

So here's the kayak stitched together, the copper wire can. be removed later. I am also running a line from fore to aft to make sure the form of the boat is symetrical.

Adding Internal Fillets

With the stitching done I fillet the joints with an epoxy resin. The resin will be mixed with silica and microballoons to give it some substance. You have to be careful when you activate a resin, most especially when you make resin putty as the substance can heat up really fast and can be dangerous. So this is a job that has to be completed with a good regard for time.

When the seams are filleted I also coat the internal hull with epoxy. I need the finished kayak to be totally encapsulated so that the timbers used have a good protection against water.