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Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Four
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 the process for inputting the data into KAPER. He promptly wrote me back, and mentioned that he was thinking about setting up a project on Source Forge, and that he had been thinking about adding a feature to Hulls that would round the forms for strip building. I’m crossing my fingers, and if you have…
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Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Five
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 finished milling the strips I went to the local lumber store and picked up a couple sheets of 1/2″ CDX plywood (BTW, including labor after this episode my kayak costs $593.76, so far.) The forms of the kayak are laid out on this CDX plywood and then cut out and aligned on the strong back.…
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Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Six
Those Little Setbacks 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, my strong back ended its life on a burn pile in the woods somewhere. I gave it away before moving to Minnesota, and they left it in the rain and the snow, and by spring, it was done. Firewood it became. My current strong back, unlike my old one, is a hunk of junk. Somehow, somewhere,…
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Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Seven
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 out of my strong back worked,) but also the shape and rise of the sheer line was fair and beautiful. I quickly cleaned up the shop and got the tape measure out. The first and only measurement I took was from the rear deck, which is much higher than I had hoped, so I’ll have…
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Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Eight
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. Such a perfect kayak would fail as a learning experience. I’ve often found that I and other people that have worked for me learn more from the mistakes they have made on their own, than having their hand held along the way and achieving perfection. I figured this out with my first and only $60,000…
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Building a Perfect Kayak: Part 9
With the fiberglassing finished on the bottom of the kayak, I flipped the kayak over and started in at the Layback Lounge. If you recall from the now many previous chapters of this building log, I needed to do a cockpit recess to get the back coaming height down to a level that would allow layback rolls. Although not as low as many Greenland kayaks, nor as long as some low volume kayaks, I wanted to get the lip down to about 8 to 8.5″. To do this, I had to make a huge recess in the kayak. Designing the kayak for a recess like this allows a good amount…
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Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Ten
Last episode, I wrote about Free!Ship, and now with version 2 out, I’ve been able to recalculate by hydrostatics using the Free!Ship program to provide me with numbers that I had to calculate and figure by hand in the third episode of this builder’s log. With the new numbers, I’ve come up with some more realistic numbers for Resistance, and the like. Opps, I forgot to account for long tons when using FREE!ship. My calculations via hand and mind were actually closer than I thought. Here are the updated numbers: Design Name: Siskiwit Bay Length Overall: 17′ Beam: 21.5″ Volume: 11.81 cu. ft. Cockpit Size: 30″ x 15″ Coaming Height:…
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Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Eleven
Woe is I; I made a mistake. I forgot that for displacement, a ton is a long ton and not just 2000 pounds, which is what I’ve been using to convert the numbers in FREE!ship to pounds. With this realization, I’ve had to readjust part 10 for KAPER and the like. It also means that FREE!ship and HULLS calculate displacement so similar that it’s better than good enough for government work. The other good news is that the new KAPER numbers are very very close to the calculations that I did by hand way back at the start of this project. Looks like I still remember geometry and physics. And…
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Siskiwit Bay: The Initial Test
Sunday, no wind, the leaves on the hills surrounding town on their last legs, but yet golden with color, hardly a cloud in the sky, the perfect temperature of fifty degrees set the scene for the first test run of the Siskiwit Bay. We loaded the kayak on my car and drove a few back roads before turning on to Highway 61 and then into the municipal campground. At our destination of the boat ramp by the old power plant, we unloaded the kayak and set it into the cold blue water of Lake Superior. The private docks sat ashore pulled for the end of the season, and only two…
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The Second Test Run of the Siskiwit Bay Design
After the deck line was completely installed, I wanted to test the comfort of using a canoe seat in a kayak, so on a beautiful November day in the Northland – we only get five beautiful sunny days in November on average – I took the kayak up to Two Island Lake, which is about 15 miles by road outside of Grand Marais. The lake was perfectly calm and clear and the sky blue and partly cloudy. There was a very light almost negligible breeze blowing. For this paddle, I spent an hour and a half on the water and paddled just under 3 miles (2.85 miles total.) The second…
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How long does it take to build a cedar kayak?
This is one of the last articles in my building log and represents the beginning of the end. Yet to come is an extend testing report, one article on the changes that I’ve made since I first built it and why I made the changes, but first a set of two articles that answer two question that a builder often asks before embarking on the adventure that is canoe and kayak building: a) How long will this take, and b) How much will this cost? When I first started this build, I made a decision; I would track my hours and expenditures on a spreadsheet in order to give myself…
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Cost of Siskiwit Bay Kayak
The table below is a breakdown of what I spent on the prototype of the Siskiwit Bay. There are a few items that stand out to me: I spent very little on wood compared to the cost of the whole project. First time builders seem to often want to cut costs in the wood, but wood is only about 5% of the overall cost. It’s the little things that add up. I spent a ton of money on the little things like sandpaper, gloves, etc… These things are often ignored when quoting how much money was sunk into a project. I spent around $250, which is around 24% of the…
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Make Your Own Kayak Cockpit Cover
Having just recently finished a Skin-On-Frame Greenland kayak, I’ve been paddling it as much as possible, and it generally sits on top of my car when not in use. The other day a thunderstorm blew through and filled my boat up with water, so I decided that I better go get a cockpit cover. At the local outfitter, I discovered that they wanted $40 for a cover that probably wouldn’t fit my boat very well anyway, so I left and drove to a fabric store determined to make my own. I spent less than $5.00 there, and now after a couple hours of sewing and design I have a waterproof…
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Bryan’s Homebuilt Boats from 2004 and back
Note: The plans included on this page are for historical reference only. Carlson’s Hulls, a windows only program, is required to view them. These are the boats that I’ve built or designed for myself. I’ve helped on other boats, but I am not including them. Please, feel free to contact me to learn more about these. If you have built or build one of these designs, please, let me know, or send me a picture. I would love to hear from you. Freedom 17 The Freedom 17 canoe is the first boat that I built. I lived in an apartment at the time and built this in my living room.…
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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…
