September 6th, 2010
This is my first attempt a blogging much less actually putting a project on the internet, so please be patient.
My wife and I are building a Kevlar canoe a road that began several years ago we had read the book “Building Your Kevlar Canoe: A Foolproof Method and Three Foolproof Designs” and attempted to follow the plans in the book to create a canoe. However the process shown in the book requires you to seemingly carve the boat from the 1 inch thick foam strips surrounding the station forms which had been slathered with drywall compound. The lofting of the forms and inconsistent in sanding lead us to create an unfair (wavy) plug that was not symmetrical from side to side. Long story short we had to move and the first plug went into the dumpster before the Kevlar was ever bought.
This time we decided to approach the project in a slightly different manner. We purchased a set of station forms Bear Mountain Boat shop for their “Freedom 17ft 9 in” canoe. Their forms are cnc cut so we did not have to worry about making mistakes in the lofting process, nor rely on our saber saw skills to give us a smooth base to start with. we plan on covering the forms with .25 inch thick by .75 wide plywood strips much like the traditional wooden boat building process, but with out worrying about making it look as pretty. After an initial sanding we will use an easy sanding two part body putty (not the painfully slow setting, weak, drywall compound discussed in the book) applied in a very thin coat to fill in the cracks between the ply wood strips. From there we will decide either to pull a mold or a single canoe off the plug.
Tags: canoe
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September 6th, 2010
Today we laminated up the strong back that you will see in the pictures below. I didn’t decide to document this project until day 3 so there are no pictures of this process. We basically built up a 18 foot long “T”. The top of the “T” and the vertical portion of the “T” were built using two layers of 1X6 pine glued and screwed together with the joints staggered
We used two standard saw horse brackets to attach the 24 inch 2X4 legs to the strong back. Then used a chalk line to snap the center line and laid out the station cleats. (what the station forms attach to) The cleats were set so that the Middle one was centered on the station, all the ones to the bow were biased to the bow side of the station line and vice verse for the stern.
Tags: canoe
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September 6th, 2010
Today we installed the two end stations and the bow and stern stem formers. Then strung a string between the two ends so that the all the station formers in between will be line up with both the snapped chalk line on the strong back and the taught line on the top. Finally we installed all the intermediate station formers.
Problem 1: The Bear Mountain Boat Shop plans call for a 12 inch wide box shaped strong back, and the book calls for a 2 full length pieces of 2X6 dimensional lumber to create a “T” shaped one. Not wanting to purchase 2 – 18 foot long 2X6s we chose to build a laminated version of our own design instead. We used a laminate, with glue and screws, 8ft 1X6 pine boards into two 18 foot beams which were then assembled into the “T” shape. The “T” shaped strong back seems to have quite a bit of flex in a twisting motion, but it bounces back, keeping all the station marks in line. Most likely it will soon need some reinforcement to turn the “T” into a triangle.
Tags: canoe
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September 6th, 2010
Today we ripped down some 3ft long .25 thick Aspen boards to .75 wide. These will be used as the inside stems that the ends of the .25 plywood will be attached to. The pieces were then steamed using a hacked 20$ Walmart clothes steamer and some PVC tubing. The PVC got really soft but held up for the steaming of the two stems.
The steamer head had plugs pushed in over the screws that were pried out with a knife, then the screws were removed allowing the two halves of the head to separate. . The last thing to do was to untwist the wire clamp that was holding the hose on.
I removed the steamer head from the hose and used a brass barbed fitting and a threaded bushing to attach the PVC tube. The other end has a PVC valve for regulating the steam as it exits. When I used the steam chamber I had the valve up rather than down as shown in the picture.
After the wood as steamed it was clamped in place to cool and dry, the clamps were then removed and glue was added between the layers before being reclamped. We are only doing the inner stems as we are only making a plug instead of an actual strip canoe.
Tags: canoe
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September 10th, 2010
Today I carved the taper into the ends of the canoe. I used a belt sander to get most of the taper cut, and then switched to a sanding block for the last little bit. Then I started planking. Since we are just building a plug to pull a mold (or single canoe from) we are planking it with simple 1/4 inch thick by 3/4 inch wide strips of pine. We purchased several of the best grade of 1×6 pine boards Home Depot 12 ft long and then ripped them on the table saw into1/4 inch thick strips. Since the wood is knot free it bends to the shape of the canoe easily. The planks were not glued, just nailed to each strip to the stations with an air finishing nailer.
Tags: canoe
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