Kayak Construction: Wiring the Keel

Today’s task was to wire the two keel panels (aka “Piece #1”) together.

The first step is to “insert 4 wires – two on either side of the butt seam.” The only problem with that is that I ended up with one set of holes exactly on the butt seam, so I improvised, adapted and overcame (ie. I put in five wires instead of four).

Next step is to wire in the temporary center frame. Earlier on in the process, I followed the instruction to cut a spool of wire into 3.5 inch lengths – what they don’t tell you is that this step requires a longer piece of wire, so I fished out one of the other spools of wire and cut a longer piece for this. I propped some scrap wood under the keep to hold it in the correct angle.

The next step is to clamp the bow together, put in wires through the first three pre-drilled holes, and then drill some more holes and wire them. It all sounds so easy when you read it in the instructions, or when you read it here, but it wasn’t. It involved a lot of messing around trying to match up holes and trying to thread wires between them.

One thing the instructions don’t tell you is that when you cut the wires with “dikes” (diagonal cutters), they end up with sharp pointy ends. The upshot of that is that you’re constantly scratching yourself on them as you work around them. I’m sure that’s going to be a source of continual annoyance. Another annoyance is that I’m having trouble seeing to do the close-up work, so I’m probably going to have to bring my reading glasses out next time. Which is a real pain because I don’t need them to read, just to find the little holes when they aren’t in bright light.

This picture shows all the tools of the trade at this step – the quick grip bar clamp, which allows you to clamp and adjust the clamping of the bow with one hand, the pliers for twisting the wires, the juice glass full of wires, the DeWalt cordless drill, and the current page of the manual. At this point, I’ve got the wires in place, but I haven’t tightened them yet. After taking this picture, I tightened the wires, removed the clamp, and then did the same process on the stern.

Now the boat is put up on some scrap wood to get it off the table, and wires are inserted in all the pre-drilled holes along the keel. Again, it sounds so easy, but it turned out being moderately hard. Part of the problem is that trying to feel around with the end of the wire to find the hole under the keel panel is hard, and I didn’t want to do too much fumbling around because the pointy ends of the wires scratches the hell out of the wood. For much of them, I’d lean down to where I could see the near hole, put the wire through that, and go around the table and put in the other end in that side’s hole. And hoped the wire didn’t pull out from the other side while I was fiddling on this side. The wires were only loosely twisted at this point.

Now the bow and stern temporary frames are wired into place with more long wires, and once they are secure the keel wires are all tightened. I tightened them until the gap pretty much disappeared, ideally stopping before the wires got so tight that they started tearing the wood, although I heard a bit of tearing in a few places. I actually tore one wire right out because the hole was too close to the edge, but the wires on either side seemed to be holding the gap closed so I didn’t replace it. The keel has a bit of rocker to it, and so a few scraps of wood to hold up the bow and stern helped things come together.

The boat is starting to look a bit like a boat, and this seemed like a good point to break for lunch. It’s hot as hell out so I’m debating whether to do the side panel (aka “Piece #2”) now or wait until tomorrow.