Time to build a Sea Kayak

A long time in coming is a new boat. Well I've been working on a kayak for the past six months off and on and now waiting for days it's warm enough for epoxy work in the garage to finish the epoxy work.

So.... over the next couple weeks, I'll be catching you up on my new project.

Ever since kayaking in Maine, I've had the bug to build a sea kayak, get close to the water no other craft, perhaps get a bit of exercise, do some fly fishing and photography in the tiniest of waters and an excuse to make new friends. There's no lack of wood kayak plans available, most speedy and a bit tender craft. I wanted something relatively stable but still possible to roll and recover and it didn't need to be very fast. I'm also no slender man anymore, so wanted something large enough to carry my 200+ pounds, plus perhaps another 50 pounds in mixed fishing, photography camping gear. At the end of the search, I picked a simple design, the Okwata 15-26" by JemWatercraft
Okwata 15-26


Hard chined for respectable maneuverability, a nice shape that should be pretty simple to build and has enough volume to carry me on small overnight adventures. Also like the extra chine just below the shear, something becoming common on many newer designs to reduce paddle width.

Next time I'll review the plan packet and materials.

Enjoyment on Lake Wynoochee

Spent a few days doing what Sundew does best, exploring Lake Wynoochee for a few days. According to my GPS I rowed about 20 miles in the two days, averaging about 3 knots when I was moving. Most times that was very relaxed rowing.

Finishing the oars

Oars are complete... I used Prisma colored pencils to complete the drawings, sprayed a fixure. I used a wood burning tool for the name "Sundew" on the loom and a small sketch of a wood duck taking off on the opposite oar. Applied six coats of spar varnish.

To leather the oars, I cut a squares of 6" by 6" leather each about 1/4" of wrapping around the shaft just below the loom, punched stitching holes (a 1/8" drill works as well) every 3/8" and about 3/16" from the edge. Next I soaked the leather for 15 minutes, than stitched them on using heavy waxed thread. I wrapped 1/2" wide leather strips as buttons and glued them on with Elmer's weather proof wood glue (clamps for one hour). 

After a four hour row yesterday I'm very pleased with the oars. They are light, well balanced and the narrower blades still have plenty of bite. Hey and they look good! What's not to like :-).

Shaping and art ideas

I rounded the shaft by marking using this rounding jig similar to Jim Michalak's, but using screws 2 3/8" apart and holes centered 1" apart for the pencils. The jig follows the taper and marks where to plane each corner so it's eight sided. 

I further planed off the corners to create a 16 sided shaft. From there I used 80 grit strips of paper, holding each side sanding side to side to round out the shaft. Overall about two hours of work and a bit of sweat but not too difficult. The handles (not shown) were done the same way.

To shape the blades I drew a center line and again hand planed each to a 1/4" beveled edge, checking every few minutes with a 6" straight edge and finishing off with a half sheet pad sander. I further tapered and rounded the shaft past the neck where they sandwich the blades to about 1/4" thick. 

 I sanded everything down with medium grit than fine grit.

I traced art work on each blade which I will fill with colored pencils similar to the dory's art, using water edge plants to stay with the Sundew theme.

From oar design to wood

Time to start cutting blanks. I followed the general layout shown by Jim Michalak, centering the longer piece that would form the center and drawing the two shorter blanks at mirror ends.

I cut out the center first and decided the fit the hard wood tips before gluing the blanks together. I added a decorative curve, clamped the pine blank and scrap red oak together and them simultaneously with a heavy scroll saw blade so they'd be a good fit. I mixed up a bit of epoxy thickened with oak saw dust and fit into the blades. The results are below. 

 After cutting the blanks on a bandsaw, I carefully aligned the pieces together and drilled a hole for a finish nail in the tripled part of the blade and in the loop that that would keep everything aligned after the glue was applied and clamped. I was low on epoxy, so used Elmer's waterproof wood glue--which I've found works fine as long as the wood doesn't become saturated with water and there's no serious loads. After the glue set, I marked and cut out the taper and handles using bandsaw. The completed oar blanks are below ready for rounding.  

Oars for Sundew-design

It's been too long since I made a post--too busy enjoying Sundew and other things that get in the way. I've been using a heavy pair of West Marine oars cut down to 7'3" from 8'. They certainly work but have no flex and aren't a good match for the boat. So I've designed to build a set of oars.

I remember building a set nearly 20 years ago out of one piece of wood per oar. One of them warped badly so I don't consider them a success. This time I wanted something light, a bit springy, with better wood and laminated to resist warping. 

Figuring out the length was pretty easy--I like to row with overlapping hands but even than 7'3" was just a bit too long. This new set would be 7' long. Fortunately this matched the recommendation I used from John Leather's Clinker Boatbuilding of half the distance between the locks plus overlap all multiplied by 25/7. For Sundew that's (43"/2 + 2") x 25/7 = 83.9" or just call it 7'. Nice!

Next was my current blades of 5 1/2" by 24" are also a lot more grip than I need and the wind tends to catch them--so I wanted longer narrower blades, perhaps 28" by 4 1/2". 

I found an excellent article by Jim Michalak on oar-building that I'm going to adapt (see

http://www.boatbuilding-links.de/Jim-Michalak/oar-building-and-rowing.htm). He laminates three pieces of standard 1"x 6" good quality pine for each oar. I'll look for some quarter cut at a hardware store, but the lamination will probably minimize warping even if they are flat cut. 

I prefer slightly large tapered handles 1 1/2" to 1 1/4" diameter. John Welsford recommends offsetting oar handles a bit so it's easy to feel the current position of the blade--I'll decide later. I'll also add a hardwood tip to the blade for durability. The loom will remain square to add counterbalancing weight. 

The final dimensions are as follows: 

Willet Concept drawings

Promised myself I'd do at least one post with honest progress towards my next project. So I'm starting with some basic concept drawings of how I see Willet, my next adventure craft. Originally I'd thought a set of berths would work, but I've noticed that most boats around 16 feet suffer from excessive windage and I assume pointing ability. With that in mind, I've gone with a 4' x 7' flat, set about waterline and drawn the cabin height just enough to sit comfortably inside. For this first drawing, I've added leeboards to clear the cabin space. The cockpit is small, just comfortable for two people, but self-draining with a space for a potta potti under the stern deck and out of the way.

Next I'll work up some primarily cad work see if it's possible to get the stability I need to sail comfortably yet narrow enough to recover from a capsize with my 200 pounds if worse comes to worse. This will help define the cross sections.