Today was a long and hot day. It’s a good thing I’m not counting the hours, because I’m sure I’m taking more hours than what they say it should take. Plus it was hot and humid as hell today, and for much of the work I couldn’t use my stool and had to stand. Looking at the Pygmy Boats site, I’m about done 15 of the theoretical 70 hours (not including some of the optional extras I’ve bought). Today I added the side panel (Panel #2) on each side, and it’s looking a lot more boat-like. Because this is a hard-chined boat, the joint between panel 1 and panel 2 is the chine.
Continue reading ‘Kayak Construction: Adding the side panels’ »
Archive for the ‘Kayaking’ Category
Today’s task was to wire the two keel panels (aka “Piece #1″) together.
Continue reading ‘Kayak Construction: Wiring the Keel’ »
On Monday night I finished beveling the shear line with the palm sander.
Continue reading ‘Kayak Construction, drilling the holes’ »
Vicki and I and my cow orker Rob and his wife Iris paddled tonight. We put in at the Genesee River Paddling Center, and paddled up the river, down the canal, and up Red Creek. Red Creek is a very narrow creek that goes through some people’s back yards, golf courses, and some surprisingly wild land. We saw a Great Blue Heron, some carp, and some beautiful wetlands flowers.
According to Google Maps Pedometer, we did 3.7 miles. It wasn’t fast, and it was kind of tiring to paddle so slowly, but it was good to paddle with Vicki.
I had to work this weekend, which means I didn’t get to spend much time working on my kit, nor did I manage to get out kayaking. Although the weather was mostly shit, so I probably wouldn’t have managed more than a quick dash if I could have gone. Worse, I missed an opportunity to meet up with a couple of people who’ve built a Pygmy Boats kit similar to mine.
The next tasks on my list were to bevel the cockpit reinforcements so that they won’t clash with each other when the pieces go together at an angle, and to bevel the shear line so that when the deck and the hull are put together, they join at the outer ply only. The instructions are a little vague but they suggest that you can do this using a wood rasp, sanding block or block plane. I happened to have a palm sander, and I like a bit of power when I’m going to be removing wood. By holding the sander at approximately a 45 degree angle, and sanding until I saw the glue line between the first and second ply move back to just the right amount behind the sheer line, then I knew I was just biting into the third ply.
I got half the sheer lines done (the side on panel 3) before my hands got so numb I couldn’t continue.
After a couple of days of it being too cold to glue, yesterday I glued the 4 pieces of cockpit reinforcement that I cut on Tuesday. The instructions said to mix in some wood flour into the epoxy to make it “the consistency of honey”, which is odd because I think of normal epoxy as being about that consistency normally. It also didn’t say how much to mix up, so I did one squirt of resin (1 ounce) and hardener (1/2 ounce).
Before I mixed in the flour, I used some of the epoxy to fix one of the joins where the cloth actually came up off the wood - I crammed in the epoxy with the stir stick and then put the mylar sheet on top and several brick on top. I wasn’t expecting perfection, but I’m hoping it will be less obvious that it was before.
The gluing went ok, but I nearly ran out of epoxy at the end. The first one had lots of epoxy running out the side when I put the bricks on, and the last had absolutely none.
This evening I checked on it and took off the bricks. The join fix came out about as well as I’d hoped - it sticks up a bit and it’s obvious if you look, but I think it won’t be horribly obvious to bystanders. I’m hoping it will be less obvious when it comes time to glass the whole thing. (But if you want to embarrass me, it should be on the left side of the deck very near the stern)
The reinforcement plates had the usual sorts of problems. One of them stuck to the table where the spillage missed the plastic I’d put under it, and I had to scrape off the stuck on table wood with the cabinet scraper. Another one had some scmutz from the brick stuck to the top, and I scraped that off as well. But the one where I’d used up the last of the epoxy seems to be stuck on good and tight, so no worries there.
On Monday I turned over the panels to do the last side. Once again, I had to do a lot of scraping with a cabinet scraper to deal with epoxy that had seeped under the panel, and cutting with the carpet knife to try to restore the original edges of the piece. Rob came over to see how it was going, and it was good to have somebody to talk to while I worked, although it did distract me. I actually mixed the epoxy and was getting ready to apply it when I realized I hadn’t put any plastic wrap underneath, and was in danger of sticking the pieces to the work bench. Fortunately with two of us working it didn’t take long to put the plastic wrap under.
This fourth side benefited from the experiences from the other three, so it went pretty quickly and well. The only problem was that it also was harmed by how ratty the mylar sheets were - I got some voids because of gunk stuck to them, and because they’ve started to turn up at the edges a bit. Definitely next time I’ll buy enough mylar to use new ones each time.
Tuesday I finished that job, again with lots of cabinet scraper and sanding block and carpet knife action. And it was too cold to epoxy, which was just fine because I spend another half hour or so trimming the pieces that are going to be glued under the cockpit to reinforce it. It’s kind of strange that the kit comes with all these CNC cut plywood pieces, and then just two chunks of uncut plywood and instructions to cut the reinforcement (and later the seat) out of them. You’d think they’d cut all of the pieces.
Next job is gluing those pieces on, and then bevelling the shear edges. I’m not 100% sure how I’m going to do that. I suspect a Shure-form tool would be too agressive.
After paddling this morning, I worked on my kit boat a bit. Even though I was much more careful laying down the plastic wrap yesterday, I also used a lot more epoxy, so I still had a lot of epoxy on the “wrong” side to try to scrape down with a cabinet scraper and sandpaper block. As well as that, I also had to spend a lot of time trying to cut down the sides to shave off epoxy on the side (without cutting off any wood) with a carpet knife. It was time consuming work, but mostly it went ok - I think I cut down through the epoxy too far in one place and contacted the fiberglas tape. I also had one place on a very narrow piece (on panel 3) where the tape came right up for about half its width. I’m worried about that, and I wonder if I can glue that back down at some point where I have some spare epoxy. I’m going to have panel 3 out in the next step when I reinforce the bow deck panels, so I’ll have a go then.
After finishing the left side, I staked down the right side panels and taped and glued them. I tried a few different tricks - like to get a much flatter surface below some of the big seams, I nailed them onto one of the temporary forms wrapped in plastic wrap. Hey, by the time I’m finished I’ll probably know how to build this thing! I wonder if I should do another one after I’m done this one?
I also mentioned that I was getting concerned that the mylar sheets were getting a bit ratty? I discovered that you can peel off some of the dried epoxy, and that makes it a lot smoother. So they might do for the fourth side as well.
First thing this morning I went for a paddle. I made the mistake of asking to try one of those KayakPro Marlin boats that I mentioned seeing speeding up the creek a few days ago. It was nice. At first it felt quite tippy, but after a few minutes I was paddling pretty hard and not having any trouble staying upright. But there was a bit of an undercurrent of “if you don’t pay attention, it can turn around and bite you”. I was paddling as hard as I could, and it was hardly producing any bow wave at all, unlike the Skerry. When I go hard in the Skerry, I usually find the point where the bow wave gets “big”, and then slack off a bit from there, but without that cue, I wasn’t sure how fast I was going. They told me only to take it for 15 minutes, so I did this little circuit that you can make out of alternate channels in the creek. Towards the end, I was getting tired and I found myself having to think about staying upright more again. I’ve also never paddled a boat with a rudder before, and I had to think about how to use that - evidently the idea is that you can concentrate on doing a power stroke and use the rudder to steer rather than doing a less efficient sweep to steer.
The guy at Baycreek suggested that I come to the Wednesday night racing series and do the course one night with my Skerry, and come back the following night and do it with the Marlin to see how much faster it is. Oh, this could be dangerous - I could really fall in love with this boat. I wonder which boat, the Skerry or the Pgymy, I’ll end up selling to pay for it?
Anyway, 15 minutes wasn’t enough of a workout for me, so after bringing back the Marlin I went for another paddle in my Skerry. It was a beautiful day, and I got a bit of a sunburn on the top of my head.
Ok, evidently I lied about it not getting warm enough to do any gluing today. I went to work and did all I can despite the VOB being broken, and when I came home the thermometer in the car said it was just over 70 degrees. Hey, that’s gluing temperatures, I thought to myself. So as soon as I got home I finished trimming and sanding the top side of the left side panels, and then flipped them over.
Continue reading ‘Kayak Construction, doing the other side’ »
Today I took the weights and the mylar sheets off, and it doesn’t look too bad. The first one I did (the lower one in this picture) has some areas where the fibreglas weave shows through because it didn’t get enough epoxy, and it trapped some dirt in the epoxy in the part that wasn’t covered by the mylar. I tried sanding out the dirt and I think I got most of it. I’m not sure what I can do about the weave showing through, although it’s a lot more visible close up than if you stand back a bit.
The second one (the upper one in this picture) also has a bit of weave showing, but much less. It’s very smooth and shiny and I could almost be proud of it.
The rest actually came out much better. I think you can see a bit of weave on one or two others, but for the most part you can hardly see that there is fibreglas under there.
Today isn’t warm enough to do the other side, but I’ve got to go to work anyway. Tomorrow should be good. I’ll definitely use more epoxy, keep clean bricks close to hand, and use the brush to dab rather than brush the epoxy on the tape.
The temperature is finally over 65 degrees, so it’s time to start gluing. And it did not go well.
As per the instructions, I mixed up an ounce of epoxy. I painted some on the boards around the seams. Then I cut some of the fibreglas tape and put them down on the wet epoxy and painted some more to wet the tape. Problems:
- As I painted the epoxy on the tape, the tape kept moving around. I ended up having to hold down the tape with my fingers (in the rubber gloves, of course).
- As I was painting, one of the boards popped up a bit as a nail came lose. This made gaps and bubbles to painstakingly paint out.
- Bits of fibreglas frayed off the edges and ends of the tape, and had to be carefully picked out of the epoxy.
- other random dirt got into the epoxy and had to be picked out.
- I ran out of epoxy in the middle of it and had to run inside and mix up another ounce.
With that all done, the second part was to cut some strips of mylar and put them on top of the tape, then squeegee it flat, and put weights on them. Problems:
- I’d put the nails in the boards too close to the seams, so I had to remove them and move them back so the mylar would fit. Several times that lifted one of the boards, ruining all my previous work.
- The instructions had said to weight them down with bricks. I didn’t think I had any bricks, but I figured all the scrap 2×4s I had could be piled on top. Unfortunately, it turned out that the 2×4s weren’t heavy enough, and things were popping up. With the glue hardening quickly, I had to improvise. I found a pile of half-bricks in a dingy corner of the garage and pressed them into service. Unfortunately they were filthy, and got dirt all over everything. I’m hoping none of it got below the mylar sheets.
I’m not looking forward to tomorrow’s reveal to see just how ugly these joints look. Hopefully it will be like my canoe, where I know where every blemish is but everybody else just sees the overall beauty of it.
It’s too cold to do epoxying, but that’s probably a good thing. I did some more shopping, and then did a couple of small things.
Continue reading ‘Kayak Construction, laying out the left side’ »
I’ve given up trying to decide if a day of doing nearly nothing counts as a day or not, so subsequent posts on this project probably aren’t going to have day numbers any more.
Today I made a first whack at getting the stuff on the shopping list. I didn’t get all I need, mostly because I couldn’t find a bunch of stuff at Home Despot and didn’t reach our local hardware store until just before closing.
After that, I started laying out the boards to do the end butting, but I can’t actually do the gluing until I get a few more items on the shopping list. I also discovered that I don’t have enough space on the table to do both sides at once. That means wasting some epoxy, but on the other hand it means taking it slower and that’s probably a good thing for me.
I’m currently doing the two hour hot water soak that they recommend for your epoxy to undo any crystallization that might have happened in transit.
And I’ve got a roll of wire to cut into 3.5 inch lengths, so I’ve got the roll of wire, a pair of “dikes” (diagonal cutters), and a juice glass which just happens to be 3.5 inches deep, and I’m cutting like a mad man.
The boxes arrived. Even the one that was supposedly stuck in Hodgkins. I suppressed the urge to rip them open and immediately start to glue things together.
Continue reading ‘Kayak Construction Project, the kit arrives’ »
