Setting Up

I assembled two sections of Box Beam, with an extra 1' space in between, to make a 17' beam. I almost forgot how heavy and cumbersome it is to set up, but I got it done. I sanded the top and gave it a coat of white paint to aid in marking.
These plans call for the use of an internal beam, but I decided to improvise a little and do it on a ladderback. I found the form with the greatest distance between the waterline and the bottom edge, and marked that distance on a ruler. 

I aligned that form directly to the top string, and every form that same distance from the waterline to the string. The rocker falls into place naturally. Interestingly, the forward half of this kayak has considerably more rocker than the aft.

I somehow found the finagling & leveling easier than it used to be. 5/8" MDF would have been easier to handle than 3/4", but I couldn't find any.

I found this easier also. After measuring the rocker, I eyeballed the "knife" edge to the string. The waterline mark is really short on this form, so I leveled by placing the level vertically on the "blade" part of the assembly, and the station form. As usual, I used a mini-bracket to support the weight and align the tip of the form to the string.

Forms

At this point, I normally wouldn't make a post about cutting out the forms, but I tried a new way of doing it.

I tried cutting them out on a scroll saw, in order to cut closer to the line than I can with the jigsaw. This is 3/4" MDF, and the scroll saw struggles with it a little, but it definitely made sanding to the line easier. If I had the skill/guts, I could cut right to the line with the scroll saw. It was also a good way to cut the "split" forms apart. Speaking of which, I managed to lose one half of form 17, and had to make another one by tracing from the other side

Starting A New Build

I got plans for a Cape Ann Storm SLT. I had/have some trepidation about the small size.
One the one hand:
 The max paddler weight is 160, and I now weigh a whopping 167.
 The max loading weight is 200, and I may come close to that, including gear.
 The performance might be lousy at the max weight.
 It might be an uncomfortable fit.
On the other hand:
 Vaclav's plans always seemed to run a little larger than expected.
 Vaclav's limits & dimensions are based more on technical data than practice.
 I sought advice on Nick's message board, and the "experts" assured me that it would be fine.
 I'll finally be building the small, "grab & go" kayak.
 I'm trying to lose 10 pounds this winter.
 If its too small, someone else might find it appropriate.😉
I'm also going to try pawlonia for the hull.

Outer Island "Emergency" Repair

Went for a three-hour paddle in R.I. yesterday. A fine trip, until I loaded the kayak on the car. I rested the hear hatch on my head, and the hatch rim broke! I thought the boat seemed kind of heavy when I took it out-there was a good deal of water in the aft compartment, which at first, I thought (hoped) might be condensation, but there was none in the forward compartment. At home, I found the aft rim trashed/saturated/delaminated. The rear bulkhead was also delaminating. 
This put me into a frenzy of repairs, since I'm hosting a paddle to Selden Island Saturday. Actually, its lucky that it happened Thursday, and I had time for repairs. It would have been a drag if it had happened Saturday morning, on the way to the paddle.
Wow, I guess that all it takes is a pinhole in the (@#$&!) plywood to trash the plywood-just as happened with the skeg box, At first, I feared that my skeg box repair might be leaking, however, I now recall that the aft hatch looked a little "sunken" for a while, and lots of water must wash over the rear deck.
I might need to find a new way to treat plywood with epoxy.
I replaced the hatch lip the same way that I originally built it. I now think that some one of the parts must have not been epoxied well, started leaking, and let lots of water in. The water then found its way into the bulkhead. After the Selden Island paddle, I went to work on the bulkhead. It too, was disintegrating. This time, I tried fiberglassing 1/8" ply with 2 oz. glass, hoping that it might seal the plywood better that way. I also started the fillets from the compartment side of the bulkhead, and did a smooth fillet on the cockpit side.
I hope that I learned something from this 😌

Enders Island Again

I paid a visit to Enders Island, not by kayak, but just to relax. I felt that it deserved its own post as a destination itself, not just a kayak landing spot.

Hmm.

Inside the church, stained glass.

Relics. The place where they are is like a little shrine-I almost felt funny taking pictures in there. They were hard to see, but I think that the small ones might be tiny relics, like hair?

And the one that creeps people out...

St Edmund's Arm. 

Back outside, the weather was perfect, and the grounds beautiful:

There are many benches & etc. with memorials on the grounds.

I knew this fellow years ago. Its a nice memorial, but slightly ironic, because he was never called "Rocky" or "Rock"! 

Finally Starting The Season

I uh..."disposed" of the Redfish. Physically easy, but mentally difficult.

It finally stopped raining, and I ditched work. Went for a "light" paddle on Powers Lake. Felt fairly good about it. I had been lifting (small) weights to prepare, but discovered that it was the core muscles that needed work.😉

Tuning Up The Outer Island, Again

I put the pieces of the Golden "aside", broke the strongback down, cleaned up a bit, and put the O.I. on sawhorses.

I decided to add a strip of 4 oz. glass at the bow & stern.
Last year, I did relatively light sanding before varnishing. This year, I went right at it with the R.O.S, and realized just how thick the varnish is! In the future, I may sand more before each re-varnishing. More sanding results in hitting the fiberglass in more places, but I'm re-epoxying the bare spots.
Repairing the bare-glass spots went well. I applied one coat of epoxy, scraped lightly, then another coat of epoxy, wider than the first, before sanding. Blended in well.
Varnishing went well, using my favorite masking technique. I thought that the weather was un-cooperative: occasional rain and 60% humidity in the basement, but all coats dried in 24 hours. Another discovery: it is the thinner that stanks so bad, not the varnish. First coat 50/50, second coat about 70/30, and third coat about 85/15. The third coat barely smells.

Sadly, Project Aborted

I have decided not to finish building this kayak, at least not at this time.
I simply could not get the deck and hull joined. The hull spread apart at the sheer, and three ideas that I had for bringing the parts together didn't work.
After meltdowns, I realized that there were just too many errors and things that I didn't like about the build, to go on. Its getting late, and I have to get the Outer Island ready for the water.
What I Don't Like About it:
Ugly. My idea for Plain-Jane stripping didn't really work, visually. The cockpit opening came out a strange shape. The actual design doesn't appeal to me, anyway.
Weight and Size. This was finally supposed to be my ultra-light-weight, "grab and go" boat, but I did things that made it heavier than I wanted it to be, and it's longer than I visualized.
I didn't really like using Joe's system for the strongback setup. I'm not as confident about the alignment.
I got started late, and felt time pressure since about New Year's. 
Well, there's always Next Year 😉
I still have the forms for the Dark Star, and I might consider it, but not before re-reading my post about why I didn't. 😯 Looked back at the Cape Ann Storm SLT-I didn't build it last time, because I was afraid that I weighed too much, but it wouldn't be the first time that I messed up by letting Kayak Foundry statistics tell me what to do.

Glassing The Hull

It may be the case that I have already peaked in Kayak Building skills. 😉
Fist discovery this morning was that the roll of fiberglass was not wide enough to cover the hull, even though I thought I had figured it out. A patch was necessary.
I warmed the resin for several hours in a hot water bath. I mixed up 1-1/2 cups, and started working on the stern section. I expected the resin to be warm, but I became aware that it was getting warmer on its own! Surprising, since I figured that the RAKA resin with the non-blush hardener would be slow-curing under any conditions-but I was holding a 16 oz. cup full of mixed resin. Panicking, I immediately dumped it on the hull. It was actually beginning to give off steam at this point. The area where I dumped it had a cloudy, weird look, which I think was caused by the resin becoming too stiff to saturate the glass properly. I thought about ripping it off to start over, but instead worked on it with a hair dryer. Much air came out, and eventually it looked almost right. I decided to live with it rather than to waste that much fiberglass and epoxy.
I went to smaller mixes, and did the rest of the hull with good results.
I did two "generous" fill coats, then scraped & sanded. I hit the fiberglass lightly in a few spots. I made a few minor discoveries. I had been in the habit of trying to skim on very thin coats of epoxy with a scraper, a squeegee, pieces of foam, etc, and always had trouble with air. I found that the Lowly Chip Brush puts a thicker coat on the boat, and for some reason, tipping off the job with the brush gets rid of air. It might be the case that my experience actually messed me up-if I had been slathering a thick coat with a chip brush, I'd have gotten better coats! I hit the glass badly in some spots on the last build, because I had been relying on the R.O.S. too much, and it was cutting off the high spots.
However, after hitting the glass in more places, I opted for two more skim coats of FLAG resin. 

Fairing The Hull

The year's time in between builds give me time to forget just how much work some of the tasks are! Setting the hull back up on the strongback and fairing the hull took the greater part of the day.
I may have given up un perfectionism. In previous build, I have found flaws after the fact, and wondered why I let them go. I now realize that I let them go because of fatigue and impatience. I also got tired doing this job, and left a few things that could have been done better. It will still be a kayak, I will still use it, and I won't know if its good until I do.

Hull Interior Work

I decided to leave off fairing the deck until its attached to the hull, and get to work on the hull interior.

As expected, there are gaps between the internal stem and the hull at both the bow and stern. I thought about cutting a piece out, but decided on filleting instead.

A hefty fillet was required to fill in the gap. It adds weight, but also adds strength.

Glassing the interior went pretty routinely. I made one discovery-I had trouble getting the glass to adhere near the sheer line last year because the glass wasn't well saturated enough. Its harder to see against the lighter colored wood.

After burying those internal stems in rather massive fillets, I decided on small end pours, just so I'll have something to drill through for the grab loops.

Skeg box in place.

Glassing the underside of the deck went routinely.

Deck Stripping

I'm using a lot of dark-looking cedar for the whole build. I usually get so absorbed in the technical aspects of stripping that I forget about fancy patterns, so this time I decided not to go for any accent stripes, just the whole deck similar. I have a jolly little dolphin inlay for a decoration.
As always, puzzled over the problem of how to make the transitions at the ends. 

I ended up stripping "intuitively", with an interesting pileup of fits and angles.

I end up with strips coming together like this. It looks familiar.

Stretch tape pulling things together.
Sometimes, I can't figure out or plan how to do a detail until I actually start working on it.

A perfect example arose when the deck strips laid from the center  started approaching the strips laid from the sheer. I could see that there would be a considerable drop down to the deck level, but I just kept adding strips until I saw what I needed to do.

I don't even call this a "whiskey" plank, because it was Beyond Whiskey ;) I have a clamp bending the top strips down to the deck level, and several clamps trying to make the strips come together. I hope it holds!
It held together just fine, but it produced a sort of concave curve down to the deck. It won't show well in a photo. I puzzled for a while about figuring out a way to push the curve out, but its the same on both sides, and I was afraid of messing it up, so I'm leaving it.
The height difference between the fore and aft edges of the cockpit opening is almost 7", so I'm going for a molded fiberglass rim.

Hull Work

Again, I decided to do some of the fairing work on the hull before turning the boat over. It just seems to go better with the boat still on all the forms. 

Of course, I worried about the fairness of the stems and keel line, but I always do. The shape of this kayak is much different that any I've built before. It looks "fat" in the area between midpoint and stern, and the chine is harder. 
Here, I have wet the stern area down  for scraping & sanding. I always forget just how much sanding is required to get the strips looking good.  

Stems

When I laid the center strip. I had some kind of intuition that I should overlap it on the internal stem. It seems to have worked out well, although you can see the joint if you look closely.

The stem layups that I made earlier din't even come close to fitting, so I fell back on the "old" technique. I planed basswood down to 1/8" x 3/4", and set the first strips with dookie.

Layers 2,3, and 4 were glued with Titebond. A little heat bending was needed at the ends, which was easy with these this strips. I'm always amazed at the amount of clamping pressure that can be achieved with several laps of shrink wrap.

The four layers looked huge.

I ground the basswood down to the angle of the hull, and was surprised at how much smaller the stem became-about 2 layers ended up sawdust! The stem seems to be blending into  the center strip fairly well.

Stern. More fairing to be done, especially that whoop-dee-doo curve in the middle.
Generally, this is going quite well, and I think its going to look nice.

More Stripping

The instruction manual advocates some type of stripping technique I'm unfamiliar with, sort of how Vaclav cuts in inlays, but I decided to go at it by bending strips with the heat gun.

There was a considerable twist necessary at the stern-the stern stem is narrow and skeg-like.

A spot where I had to improvise a little. I had trouble getting the strips to reach the internal stem, so I beveled & glued them to each other. when I started shaping the ends. they were too far apart to be covered by a 3/4" strip, so I pulled them together and glued in a piece of strip.

Another improvisation. I glued a center strip on top of the first, so I'd have a place to glue subsequent strips. I hope that the picture is more descriptive than my words!

I figured out a new way to get the center strip aligned straight. I had noticed in previous build that it always looked straight after the first two strips were glued to it, so this time, instead of struggling to get the center strip straight by itself, I cut and planed the two bottom strips before nailing the center strips in. I placed the strips in (dry),checked the center strip for alignment then tacked in the center strip. Looks very straight!

Stripping

After all. I opted for a "waterline strip". The plans don't actually show a waterline strip, but I figured that the "reference lines" on the forms were close enough to where I remember where "waterline marks" usually are. Its decorative anyway.

As expected, the usual tapered strips, lots of tape, and "creative clamping". I still got away without using cheater strips at the bow.

At the stern, I didn't like the way the strips were curving, so I did go for a cheater, both to straighten out the curve, and reach into the concave area. In all, I remembered Jay's advice to "get the boat in wood'.
At this point, I had a little revelation on the subject of "mistakes". They usually annoy me, but at this point, I'm actually glad I have made them, because I have acquired skills while fixing them. I'm  using the skills to work with "difficult" areas.

Actually Laying A Strip

I did, in fact, have to re-make both internal stems, because I misjudged the angle of taper. I'm finding the process of tapering the internal stems more difficult that I thought it would be-I always tapered the "cutaway" stem first, and then made the strips conform to it. This time, I have to check the taper/angle with each strip that goes down. I have the feeling that I will be improvising later.

The sheer strip. I actually used epoxy to glue it to the stem.
I did the usual technique of tacking the sheer strip to the forms, and checking for fair. Its coming out about average, I can see that a form or two might have to be moved.
At a Point Of Frustration, I got fed up with preconceptions, and decided to use what I know, and just start stripping.

I thought about using a waterline strip, but didn't like the way it looked. Trying something new for the keel accent strip-a strip that goes the full length, glued onto the internal stems. I think I can somehow blend it into the external stem pieces. I also "made" it fit by grinding down the tops of the pointy-er forms. I'm starting to realize that what really matters is making strips fair to each other, not slavishly following the forms.
I laid the first full-length cedar strip today, seeing very happily, that no cheaters will be necessary at the stern, and only a couple at the bow.
I did the routine of laying a strip straight out to the bow form, with the intention of filling in the gap with cheaters, but I had a problem with getting the strip to merge with the internal stem. It finally occurred to me that I could bend the strip down to the shear strip without a cheater.

It hits the internal stem at a better angle than the strip that I tried to run straight out. There may be cheaters as I go further up.

Internal Stems

Ironically, I ditched the Dark Star, and selected the Golden because I wasn't in the mood to try new, first-time techniques, but in reading the manual. I can see that I will be doing just that, anyway.
The Golden uses internal stems, built up as a lamination, using the forms as a mold. I didn't like the idea at first, but after starting, I'm liking the idea. 

Easier than I thought, with thin strips. On previous builds (The O.I.), I had to shape the edge of the stem by guesswork, before stripping, and the angle wasn't always optimal. This way, I can shape as I go along, for a good angle and fit. Unfortunately, I got a little carried away "freehand" shaping this stem, and it might have to be remade :S

They also have you laminate an external stem atop the internal stem, while you're in the mood. Photo shows the external stem of basswood atop the internal stem of cedar. I've never tried it this way, I always dealt with the external stem after stripping the hull. I may yet do it that way, but this may produce a fairer, straighter stem. We shall see.

Setting up for The Golden

After some consideration, I decided to simply Follow The Instructions. 
I made the requisite number of 2x2"  blocks and 5x10" risers. I stretched a mason's line string the length of the box beam, and centered the blocks on the string, square to the string.

The instructions call for a system where you lift up the two end forms with shims, stretch the string from them, and mark a centerline on the tops of the risers. Instead, I stretched the top string from two boards screwed to the  end of the box, plumbed the two strings, and brought the centerlines of the risers up to the string. They came out very plumb and level!

Lining the tops of the risers to the string was actually pretty easy. As usual, the grain of the plywood makes my eyes think its crooked.

All went great until I got to form #2.

I noticed, with the spacing that I used, that the risers aren't high enough. The bow form hits the box beam.

I actually called Joe Greenley at Redfish to ask him about this. He said that they space the risers so that the tip of the bow form hangs off the end of the box beam. For some reason, I assumed that the 10" risers would hold every form up clear of the box. 
I thought of several solutions:
1. Move the stations forward, so that the bow can, indeed, overhang the box. I don't want to do this, because I can't think of how I'm going to align the bow form to center.
2. Raise the forms higher on the risers. The problem is that some of the forms aren't big enough to accommodate that much movement-I'd be attaching them too  close to their edges.
3. Replace the risers with longer ones, like 13". This way, I wouldn't have to move the support blocks or the bottom string. I think I'm going this way.

I went for "option 4". I replaced the 10" risers with 13" risers, and changed the position of the support blocks. This made the forms a bit higher than I'd like them to be, but the bow form clears the box beam with a good inch underneath. I was able to align lengthwise to the string fairly easily.

The stern assembly came out quite high off the box. I used a plumb bob to align it to the string, and a mini-bracket for support.

Showing the laminated internal stems, screwed into place, later to be shaped as I go along.

Redfish Golden Plans

The plans arrived in good enough order, except for one detail-no rocker measurements on the forms.
They came with a manual, which is as terse as Rob Macks' is wordy. It seems that Joe has a completely different system for setting up forms than I've been using-he places the form risers precisely plumb and level, then sets the forms to a uniform height. The rocker is supposed to just fall in place. I'm still thinking about what to do: Ask him for the rocker measurements (he probably doesn't have them), or just follow the manual's instructions, and experience "The Learning Curve". I ditched the Dark Star because I wasn't in the mood for meeting challenges (with probable mediocrity), and here we are with "a surprise".
In the manual, they have you placing the blocks precisely on the strongback, then screwing the risers precisely plumb to an overhead string. I'd have to do everything exactly as in the manual, to the letter.
Also, the system for the internal stems is different. He has you building up a lamination of 1/8" strips on top of the end forms, and carving it to shape, instead of Jay's cut-away technique. This may actually be a good thing, since I can use cedar for the lamination only, instead of having to make the whole end forms of cedar. However, if he doesn't have the rocker measurements for the other forms, he really won't have them for the end forms.
In any case, I could just ask him, as a shot in the dark.