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Make your NDK/SKUK Romany or Explorer Seat Comfy
A common complaint about NDK/SKUK Romany and Explorers is an uncomfortable seat. If like me, you find the seat itself comfortable, but have problems with the backband pinching your arse between the seat and the band, try this easy fix before removing the glass seat. For this project, you need: You also need a comfy backband to replace the poor excuse of a backband supplied with the kayak. I heartily recommend this one: For this project, you’re going to lower the back of the seat using sandpaper and a rasp, install a new backband, and make everything look pretty. Steps: Notes: You could also try to wrap some thin minicell…
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Estimating Wave Height for Canoes and Kayaks
Grand Marais, MN straddles the boundary between two worlds. To the north, canoeists explore the many lakes and portages of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and to the south, kayakers navigate the big ocean-like water of Lake Superior. If one adventurer from each crowd paddled in the same water and waves, expect to hear different reports of how big the waves were later in the pub. In my experience, I’ve found most paddlers have no idea how to report the size of a wave, and this comes from a lack of education and a reference point. Measuring Wave Size The measurement of a wave is typically given in height…
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Print Your Own NOAA Charts
Note: Check out this updated article: Print NOAA Charts for Free. Printing your own NOAA Marine Charts is easy, produces a map exactly the size needed, and provides exactly the coverage needed. These are a few of the reasons to print your own, but equally compelling is that at 36″ to 60″, commercially produced NOAA Marine Charts are too big for practical use in a sea kayak, and buying them is expensive. If you were to buy an updated NOAA Marine Chart from the only approved print-on-demand on-line dealer, you’d spend $26 per chart plus shipping. The great news is that you can download NOAA Marine Charts for free and with…
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The Simplest of Seats
Considering how restricted the seating actually is in the average cruising kayak, it’d better be comfortable. Hours of being jammed in an uncomfortable cockpit is no one’s idea of fun – cramped muscles, hard-spot aches, and that pins-and-needles feeling in the legs just purely takes the fun out of a day on the water. For better or for worse, commercial kayaks come with one sort of seat or another, but those of us who build our own have to come up with some alternative that’s comfortable. If you’re up for it, you can certainly carve yourself a fine mini-cell seat, and there’s lots of nice carved mini-cell and/or gel seats…
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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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Building a Kayak Paddle – A La Volkskayak
Many thanks to VOLKSKAYAK designer Gerry Gladwin for allowing me to share his idea and the diagram with others who want to do it for themselves. I hope the instructions below will be helpful in making a simple, light, cheap sea kayak paddle that’s very serviceable. We’ve been using three of these for several seasons now, and apart from some cosmetic damage, have had no problems with them. The cost is under $25 per paddle. I can get one done to the “finished with the epoxy work” stage with about a day’s work. Our paddles weigh a little under a kilogram; mine’s 950gms., while the one my wife made for…
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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 Materials Needed: The laminates for…
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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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How To Make Woven Rope Carrying Handles
Pedro Almeida describes how to make Rope handles for your kayak. These work well as carry handles for singles and especially doubles for those who don't want or need a typical end toggle on their kayak.
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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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Light but Strong – Building Cedar Strip Canoes for Wilderness Tripping
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.
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Layout Panels from Hulls
Note: I do NOT support any of the Hulls files on this website. If you’re interested in the plans that I provide, click to see my Canoe and Kayak plans. You don’t need to know how to use HULLS to use those plans. Hulls is a boat design program that is easy to learn and hard to master, but it’s grand fun to be able to design your own canoe or kayak, and then be able to build one. You can see some designs here. The main question I get from people downloading my designs is, how do you get the panels layout numbers. Here’s how: The files I posted…
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How to Solo a Tandem Canoe
One of those perfect morning dawns, the dew is fresh, there is a nip in the air and the mist rising off of the mirrored surface of the water calls you out. After cooking oatmeal over a small fire you wait for your paddling partner to wake up so you can go paddling. Unfortunately, she is a constant over sleeper and a bear to force out of her slumber. The only way onto the water is if you get into your 18-foot tripping canoe and paddle it solo. Solo canoe paddling is a rewarding experience that opens you to more time on the water when you can’t get a paddling…
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Icom M72 VHF Radio Cheatsheet
The Icom M72 VHF radio or M73 is a great compact handheld with a good form factor. It transmits at slightly greater power than most handhelds, is extremely loud, offers IPX8 submersible protection, and uses a shorter antenna that’s as efficient as a standard sized antenna. It also includes every feature a kayaker or canoeist might want. For years, I’ve been using an Icom M72 VHF radio and love it, so I’ve created a handy cheat-sheet to carry around with me that shows button commands to get into the more complex features. The cheat-sheet also includes a handy cheat-sheet covering the basics of good radio talk and a step by…
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The Lomo and Canoes
One hand holding the 4 pounds of my fully auto focus frame advancing Nikon SLR camera with attached 35-70 mm lens and the other using a paddle thrust into the mud of the rivers bottom to hold the canoe steady, I eased myself into position to shoot a bow in the center of the frame shot that I love. The morning light glowed. I snapped. Snapped again, and once again. I put the camera into a dry bag and pulled the paddle out of the mud. I love photography, but sometimes wish for an easier method of capturing those great moments in time. In this age of mega-pixels, digital, 5…
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