And so, it has come to this....

So I've not done much on the kayak for a week or 2 apart from look at the garage longingly.  I did say this was a blog about trying to do this with a young family so I guess I deserved this, but with 2 kiddies and 1 wife ill with flu, I didn't really get that far (I know! they've got no sense of timing!).

Aaanyway, first night back in the garage and tonight's job was quite fun - to plot out 2 of the panels, so I guess this is the first "glimpse" of what we're going to be making!  This is effectively an X-Y plotting exercise, but you start by creating a straight baseline to plot your points from.  I scarved the panels pretty straight, but decided to play it safe and created a separate baseline anyway.  This I did with a chalk-line. 

This is my first experience of using a chalk-line, but I needed to make quite a long straight line and this is what everyone recommended.  I used my family's week of illness to buy one of amazon for 2 quid.  I would link it, but it was a bit rubbish so don't bother.  Firstly, I'll give you 2 guesses what it DOESN'T come with - lets think, I'm buying a long piece of string on a winder and ummm, oh yes, no chalk.  Stupid.  Easily fixed - one benefit of a young family is that we have an easel in the lounge.  Ok, yes I admit it, I stole their chalk, I feel bad, sort of, but I've not been able to boat-build dammit!  It was only a little bit! They could have it back, but I whacked it repeatedly with a hammer and chucked it in my new chalk-line!

I digress, back to boat.  I pulled the chalk-line taut and noticed that in places, it hovered a good inch over the wood - this comes of having to build a make-shift 16ft long bench.  Anyway, with a few adjustments, I got it pretty good, then 'pinged' the chalk to leave a mark. 

Chalk sold separately

As the chalkline is new and I've not got a lot of chalk stuck to it yet, I probably can't really blame it for not leaving a perfect line, but to be honest, I was hoping it'd do a bit better.  Anyway I used a long spirit level to firm up the line with a pencil and checked it was straight by stretching out the chalk-line again and also sighting down the length of it.  Hopefully good enough - I'm a bit paranoid about triple-checking at the moment, but that should be a good thing if it works!

Yep, thats the baby monitor by the spirit level :)

Having got my straight line, I had to go and find my plans, as this is where they first come into play.  When you design or build a boat, the plans are 2 dimensional, and funnily enough, are not full-size compared to the boat you're building (I'm told that you couldn't do this even if you wanted to because a printer wouldn't give you an accurate image at that length and you'd get stretch, etc).  You've therefore got a job to do called "lofting".  I first read about this on another blog - "the Unlikely Boat Builder" which I highly recommend and I've followed from the start, but anyway, read this article of John's on lofting if you're interested as its very good.

Here's a shot showing how 3 of the ply panels are layed out, and the offsets for the long panels.  I've removed some of the numbers because these are not my own plans and the purpose is to give you the idea, not to allow you to build a kayak without paying for the plans!

As I said, lofting is the process of plotting out the boat from the plans.  In my case, I don't have too big a job.  Take the boat panel in question as a 2-dimensional shape, and a baseline running underneath it.  Along that baseline, you then plot "stations" which are normally interesting points along that line at which we need to mark a vertical line.  This vertical line naturally will meet the panel at various points, and the plans give the offsets that you need to mark.  Simples!

Next job will be to make up a long bendy batten that I can use (in conjunction with some nails at the marks) to join the points into a fair line.  "Fair" in this context is important - it means that the line follows a good single curve from bow to stern and doesn't wiggle up and down the length of the boat.  I think my current plan is to use a bit more of my scrap plywood to make this up - this is where I get to see whether scarf joints really live up to their reputation of not creating flat spots when bent into a curve - still weighing this one up, but I think it'll be ok, at least to try.


I have 4 panels that make up the lower sides of the kayak - 2 bottom panels (gar-boards if you want to know the boaty term) and then 2 side panels each side.  CLC recommend, for obvious reasons, that you plot the panel out on one panel but cut 2 panels clamped together, thus ensuring the sides of the kayak are symmetrical.

Amusingly, cutting these panels out will actually mean I'm going to start the proper building manual for the kayak.  You can buy kits from CLC (or Fyne boats in the UK) which would allow you to skip what I've done thus far, apart from that you'd have to epoxy-glue a pre-cut scarf in the cut panels.  I didn't want to go that route as I thought it was a good lead-in to the project. 

Summary: One panel plotted out ready for drawing in the curve,  Night all!

Scarves in winter!

Ok job 2!

The not-necessarily eagle-eyed amongst you will note that I cut 8ft blanks from the wood I bought, when actually the boat is 16ft long.  I'm obviously therefore going to have to join some panels together.  At this stage I have 8 x 8ft blank panels, which will make 4 x 16ft long panels when this job is complete.

So how do we join the panels together? We'd like a joint in the wood that is not really going to show - a kayak has nice curving sides (even in a hard-chine hull like the Chesapeake) and we don't really want a flat spot in the curve half way down the boat where we created a simple butt joint (butt our 2 panels up against each other, then put a backing pad behind it).  The way to do this, keeping a single thickness of wood is to use a Scarf Joint.

Imagine you just put the 2 panels next to each other, and put glue between them - not very strong at all!  Now instead imagine that the point of contact was made larger by making it a diagonal slope - this creates a much larger surface area to glue against.  The recommended slope for such a joint is 8:1 or 12:1 (if you were doing a really structual joint under load like a mast).  That means for a 4mm thick panel, we need 8 x 4 = 32mm wide slope.

The manual and the internet describe a number of ways to create such a joint, such as using routers, belt sanders, etc but I've also read on the internet time and time again on other people's blogs that the best way is actually by hand, and however they try other techniques, they always gravitate back to the one I'm going for.  No point finding this the hard way me thinks, so lets stand on the shoulders of some giants and follow the recommendation: take your wood, and stack a number of panels on top of each other (I did 4 panels at a time).  Step the panels such that each end sticks out 32mm from the one above it.  Take your (sharpened!) bench plane and just plane down the slope - the steps set you at the right angle and provided you have a sharp plane, this is straight forward to do.

Having cut my 11inch wide blanks I had a 6inch slice of wood spare to play with, so I used this to have a practice.  It's worth doing, as you'll get an idea of how evenly you can plane the scarf.  I also think that at the beginning of a project, you sometimes need to have a few plays at things to convince yourself you're safe to get going.  Anyway, you should see how well you're doing because we're using ply, and therefore as you plane, you'll see the layers appear as a horizontal band.  If you've planed evenly, the bands will be straight.  The only thing I'll add is that I found the bottom most panel suffered a bit at the end when I tried this, so make sure you're planing on top of a hard surface.  This job is definitely easier with a sharp plane - I definitely noticed when mine got blunt and the difference when I resharpened it.

Right! Epoxy time!  This is good, but scary stuff!  Again, I used my test piece to have a little play with the epoxy before I started - I plan to do this as I go along with various bits so I can reduce the screw ups!

Epoxy is a 2 part plastic adhesive.  It has a resin, and a hardener which arrive separately.  When mixed, they cause a reaction and start to go hard.  As this reaction takes place, toxic vapour is given off, and the mixture will get warm (it didn't noticeably for me when I tried it, but I suspect will as I use larger quantities later).  The warmth speeds up the curing time, so its best to use shallow trays to spread the mixture out and stop it curing itself.  The other fiddle is you need to keep the resin and hardener stored at room temperature (18-20 degrees) or it starts to go off.  The vapour isn't good for you (and there are dire warnings about sanding semi-cured epoxy and breathing in the dust) - the long and short is take the safety instructions seriously with this puppy, and always wear vinyl gloves when handling it.

The building manual said to lay all 4 planks (well 8 halves at this stage) on top of each other and separate the layers using celophane.  You should then put epoxy between each layer and then clamp it down.  It warned that the diagonal joints of the scarves could slip apart as you clamp them, so you'll need to prevent that with clamps elsewhere on the wood.  Sounds relatively simple yes?

My work area!

Reality, as always, was not so.  Firstly, these are now 16 ft long bendy planks, and you're trying to line them up straight as this will make drawing on them easier if you have a good baseline.  Secondly, and this is a point I should have spotted, its a right PITA to glue the bottom planks when you've got 3 others stacked on top.  I didn't want to do one then the next separately because a) that would take ages and b) I don't have a huge space in the garage to store the planks all over the place gluing so I wanted this to work if I could do it sensibly.  I settled for using an array of chocks to lift the ends up in the air so I could get in to the lower layers to glue them.  I'm sorry I didn't get a picture of this (new to blogging, sorry!) as my head was definitely in epoxy mode!  Anyway, I did a bit of a dry run, and proved I could get it to work, then mixed up the epoxy and got going.  It all went reasonably well - I remembered advice about changing the vinyl gloves often - you don't want to have epoxy blobs everywhere because you couldn't be bothered to change them.

A close up of the joint

The joins on all the panels were pretty good - the dark bit is where the epoxy came out (probably put too much on, but I was worried that this is quite a critical joint and I didn't want to starve it - will get better at guessing quantities hopefully!).  It looks like its just wet, but its actually like a lump of smooth plastic or glass that sticks up a fraction of a millimeter.  Sanded down with my shiny new random-orbit sander, it looks good.  I'm glad I got the tapered join straight here as it will make the kayak look much better if the line is straight and not ragged.  I did have a few places where the celophane wasn't wide enough and the epoxy just caught the layer of wood stacked on top, but fortunately it was only a tiny amount - close call though, I'll have to be more careful.

My next task will be to draw on a baseline (any ideas how to get a 16ft long straight baseline anyone? Maybe I need to buy a chalkline..) then I can mark up the panel shapes from the planks.  More on this next time!

Blog - reboot!

I'll leave the posts below for posterity, and so that you know that I'm a real person and that delays are inevitable with a combination of time, young children and the necessity to rebuild the garage before I could start, but anyway, I'm restarting this blog now that I'm actually making proper progress!

The wood arrived in December just after Christmas.  A word of warning to those of you who want to buy marine ply for a kayak.  First, make sure you do actually buy Marine Ply not regular, or the whole project will have been for 'nowt before you start as you haven't taken it seriously :).

The other thing is that the wood for the Chesapeake 16 is 4mm thick (not that many other boats are a lot thicker) and you need to find somewhere to purchase it and deliver it.  That 2nd point is important because you don't want to be carting 4mm ply on your roofrack as this is an 8ft x 4ft board that is going to break if you have much windage on it going down the road.  In terms of marine ply orders, a kayak doesn't qualify as a particularly huge order, so make sure the guys you buy it from are happy to deliver it.  This will be great peace of mind when you don't have to play with roofracks and damaging your wood and you can simply accept or not accept the order when it arrives direct to your home :).

I was lucky enough to get my wood from a place called Bamptons where they did deliver and gave helpful advice about the wood types and what to do.  Highly recommended if you're in the Solent area in the UK.  I have 3 x 4mm full boards (8ft x 4ft) and 1 x 6mm half board (4ft x 4ft) plus 10ft lengths of spruce for the sheer clamps (the thin strips of wood that run around the inside top edge of the kayak to hold the deck on).

Ok - I'd already repeatedly digested the plans so I was pretty familiar with how to get started (as I mentioned before, it was great to be forced to read before starting because the temptation is to get down and dirty and one thing I want to make sure is I don't rush and mess things up here).

Job 1: Rip 2 of my 8ft x 4ft (4mm) boards into 11inch wide panels.  I used another piece of wood (an 8ft contiboard shelf actually) as a guide to run my circular saw down.  Measure 15 times, cut once :).  This was actually quite a moment for me, because this definitely left me with the thought "thats it, I've started, I've made some sawdust!".  I've then got 8ft x 11inch long blank panels.  There was then a pause as the epoxy hadn't arrived due to a mix up at the shippers, so I'll pause here too!

Background reading

I'm fairly ok with whats going on in the plans now - with the garage delaying things, I'm sure I'll be refreshing my memory a few more times (and I can't put the plans down) yet.  For those not familiar with how you go about doing this, I believe this to be the rough idea.

First, I'm going to need to purchase the bits, primarily the marine ply initially.  I think I've found a couple of local sources to try (I'm near the solent, boats, chandleries and boatyards are everywhere).  Based on the book I mentioned before, I've got a few hints and tips as to what to look for when buying.  Marine ply differs from standard ply mainly in quality, but also in build.  It has a rigorous standard to achieve - BS1088, which dictates how many joins can be in the sheets, what is used in the core of the material, how many checks, knots etc and that there are no voids which destroy the strength and allow rot to form.  It also differs in how each layer of the ply sandwich is joined to its neighbours.  I'll maybe cover more on this later, but for now, lets continue with the overall idea.

The next step is to get this ply home (its 4mm thick, gonna have to come up with something as it'll break on a roofrack) and then draw out the plans on the ply.  The Chesapeak kayak has 4 panels making up the underside, plus the decking.  Marine ply (as with most boards) will come in 4 x 8 foot panels, so I will need to cut strips suitable to meet the layouts, and then join them together using a scarf joint.

We have a plan!

Oooh, so Friday (ok, I didn't post this Friday - child no.2 was ill), the plans arrived. 

The plans consist of 2 things, the A2 paper plans and the building manual.  For now, its the building manual that interests me, because I want to have as much of it in my head as possible.  I bought a book written by Chris Kulczycki (who used to own CLC) and it includes basic plans for the Chesapeak 16LT, 17 and 17LT already, so I have already seen a lot of the info in the plans, but I'm glad I have both - they naturally overlap, but the book covers more general parts of the subject as well, so the combination of the two is quite handy.  For example, the book assumes you know less about epoxy than the plans (I know nothing beyond what I've read so far).  Anyway, the book is good, practical, and I devoured it within 2 nights of receiving it. 

I haven't mentioned this yet, but there's gonna be a slight delay before actual construction begins, as one of the things we want to do is to rebuild the garage.  Our garage has been annoying us since we first moved in, as it leaks like a sieve (rusty tools, grr) and as it has a transparent corrugated roof and is small, its an oven in summer.  Anyway, for a few reasons, we're rebuilding it, but that gives me a little time (the architect comes tomorrow, we're not gonna be faffing for months!) to digest these 'ere plans.

I'm kind of glad I have this time whilst the garage work starts, because one thing I've seen in several places now, and one thing I'm also not good at, is fully planning before I start.  By actually being forced to sit with plans and unable to start, I'm really getting my head into them.

When I first got my head into the idea of building a boat, I found a blog (linked on the side bar) called the Unlikely Boat builder - currently he's sailing his boat back home, but I caught the blog as it was starting, and followed his journey through building his dinghy, Cabin Boy.  One thing that stood out to me was to make mistakes slowly - this is something I intend to do.  In part, this is not reaching for the quick power tool, not because it won't do the job, but because you might need that time to decide if you should actually be doing a particular task in the first place before you make that stupid cut in the wood!  It is making sure you've double-checked everything and that you pause to question, if something isn't lining up or fitting properly, why that might be before you reach for the hammer!  Anyway, lets hope that I can maintain this ideal in my head or you'll know doubt see me eating my words a few articles from now!

I've also ebayed for some spring clamps (it looks like I'll need one or two...) so I now have 10 spring clamps for a tenner - not bad!  I think I'm mostly there on the other tools I need, the one exception being an orbital sander.  Of course, if I'm going to be buying a sander (and the pocketship, if not the chesapeak needs LOTS of sanding) then I'm toying with the idea of a wet+dry vacuum to keep the dust down.  This might pay back in time as well as health benefits, but a decent sander + vacuum wouldn't be cheap.  One thought was that, as mentioned, no.2 child was ill last week (Grandma got decorated) and we had to borrow a vacuum to clean the carpet (this isn't the first time) - I reckon thats an interesting double-life for any wet+dry vac, boatbuilding and..., well, lets stop there :).

Starting out!

Ok - here goes!

So this is interesting - I'm setting up a new blog (something I've not done before). I always swore to myself that despite working in the IT industry for a number of years, I wouldn't set up a blog and add to the general detritus of the internet unless and until I had something to talk about. Hopefully, having kept that promise to myself thus far, this new blog will have something to say!

So what is this all about? As I've said, I've been working with computers for many years, and built countless numbers of them for myself, friends, relatives, etc. I've built shelves, some basic furniture and turned my hand to a reasonable number of around-the-house DIY projects, but had a growing craving to have a crack at something a bit more challenging - something I could point at and be proud of. Equally I guess, something non-IT related - something "real". Working at an IT company, I'm surrounded by people who are experts in some very technical areas, but can be impractical to the point of being unable to wire an electrical plug - I've always prided myself on having some in more practical interests (as well as some admittedly geeky ones!)

I've been around sailing for most of my life - I learned to sail when I was about 10 on the Norfolk Broads, somewhere I love to be. I've taught and sailed on dinghies and yachts, but sailing a traditional gaff-rigged cruiser on the Broads (especially given at times you are a 30ft boat on a 50ft river) is something special.

Choosing to build a boat has been somewhat a journey for me - I've become quite keen on the concept of a "trailer-sailor". A trailer-sailor, as its name suggests, is a boat that can be sailed, but is small enough to trail. This term appears to be bent a great deal depending on who you talk to - anywhere from a rowing boat to a 28ft boat being pulled by a serious 4x4, but I guess my definition is somewhere in the middle: A boat with a cabin, but small enough to be pulled behind a sensible car. I'm thinking along the lines of something that the children could enjoy when they're older for creek-crawling camping trips where they can hide below with colouring books and sleep, but not so big and grand it has to live in a marina.

I'll admit to a few false starts in this vision. I was swayed by the (somewhat plastic) charms of the MacGregor 26 (you'll also note it doesn't really fit my criteria above). Its an interesting design, a water-ballasted boat, weighing little on your trailer, but heavy when sailing. The downside is the compromises involved - a flat underside to enable high-speed planing under engine, a water tank in the bilges (which in turn forces higher cabin sides and freeboard) and a lacklustre rig. To some extent, a jack of all trades, master of none. In truth, absolutely all boats have compromises in their design, but understanding what they are is important so that you can decide if they suit your style of sailing. The MacGregor is too large a boat for me to trailer, and the ability to plane under engine doesn't interest me, giving me an unnecessary compromise in sailing potential for a flat bottom which will likely slam in a seaway.

I also looked at the miriad choices of other trailer sailor designs - dehler 21, cornish crabber, sailfish 18, parker 21, red fox, tide 28, etc. Whilst I didn't have any particular problem with any of them, the overall choice is baffling. What was also bothering me is that I'd read in my sailing magazine a good article on towing boats, and one of the first things you'll find is that what you are towing should not be more than 85% of the weight of the towing vehicle. That in itself limits what I can pull to 1100 kgs (including gear and anything else on board the boat when towing) - I decided to look at something smaller.

I'd always loved gaff-rig boats, though I've only seen them in Norfolk or down in Cornwall (I'm in Hampshire). I started to look round the internet and came across what I can now describe as a dream boat for me. Its noticeably smaller than the designs mentioned above, but easier to tow. At not much larger than a dinghy, it was the PocketShip that caught my eye. The idea of building a boat myself really appeals because I will have total ownership of the boat and understand a lot more (I'm not daft enough to say "everything") about it when sailing. I would have something that I can look at and be proud of, a lovely gaff-rigged boat which I can single hand, take the children out in (even let them sail on sensible days as the forces in the rig aren't prohibitive) as well as bobbing up rivers and teaching them to fish.

I guess I'm also savvy enough to know not to be swept off by a dream. If this is going to happen, I want to make sure its not going to become an expensive garage-filler that I'm not completing. I'm obviously conscious of the fact I have a young family, and I want to be sure I have the time, the skills, the drive and enthusiasm and that I'm not going to be banking on time I don't have to achieve this. To this end, I've decided to build a "test project" first. The PocketShip is designed and sold as a kit from clcboats.com, who primarily make Kayaks. As I like kayakking, and a kayak doesn't take up a lot of room, this intruiged me, and allowed me to try out a clcboat design to gauge how likely it was I could take on something larger.

Photo from Wooden Boat Magazine

This blog therefore is a diary of (hopefully) 2 projects - Chesapeak 16 Kayak and a PocketShip! I've just ordered the plans for the Kayak from Fyneboats who resell CLC designs and kits in the UK. I've decided to try and build the kayak from plans, though at this stage I think the time-saving element of buying a pre-cut kit for the pocketship appeals -one I'll mull over I guess.