Building a Great Auk

Here's a shot of the deck and hull being joined. The first seam went relatively smoothly. I put a fillet of thickend epoxy out at the ends because this design has prety sharp transitions between deck and hull near the bow and stern. It felt really good carrying the boat out the garage door in one piece to flip it over!

Here is a useful modification to my caulking gun to deliver thickened epoxy to the ends of the kayak. the twine is attached to the trigger to be able to actuate the plunger from the extended handle. I purchased some empty caulking tubes to fill with epoxy...it worked pretty good, but was diffcult to maneuver out at the end. The caulking gun handle didn't allow me to deliver very accurately. I ended up just slopping it on the joint, them working the epoxy into position using a chip brush attached to the end of a stick. If I were to do it again, I would angle the extension downward so that it wasn't in line with the tip. On the second side, I'm going to see if it works better with the original handle pointing up.

Here is how I attached a chip brush to the end of a stick. It's kind of hard to see, but the end is cut off at a compound angle. It worked really well at spreading an initial layer of epoxy as well as forming the thickened epoxy fillets. I also used it to roll out the epoxy soaked fiberglass tape.

Lastly, here is the Greenland paddle I carved. The wood is a cedar 2x4 I picked up at Home Depot. It was really tight grained and mostly free of knots. The finish is Watco Teak Oil finish...about 8 or 9 coats. The tips have a piece of fiberglass epoxied on for abrasion resistance.

A couple of other details finished. First is the finger slot for prying the hatches open...still needs to be coated with epoxy. Then the slots cut in the deck for the deck storage bungies. One pic shows an "oops" if you can find it. Oh, and did I mention that right now it is weighing in at 30 Lbs!!! Still need to add a seat, attach the deck to the hull and add bulk heads, but I'm confident I can keep the weight under 40 lbs.

I have made some progress over the Christmas holiday and here are some pictures to prove it. I hope to have the hull and deck joined before I go back to work in January 2008.

Here are the hold downs for the hatch covers. I will attach the fittings I made out of FG and Carbon fiber to the hull. Then I will use bungie cords to tension down the covers.

Here are the cheek plates used to keep me centered and to attach the back band to. I also added a couple of labels. I used rice paper and wrote the model, designer and date completed. I left it vague (knowing how I work) at "2008"...It WILL get done in 2008!

Here are some shots of the installed foot braces. I checked them out and they should be good for me. I positioned one of them incorrectly so I'm pretty much at the end of travel on one side. It shouldn't be a problem unless I lend the boat to someone with longer legs than I.

I also found time to carve a Greenland style paddle. I don't have a good picture of it yet, but here is a picture of the pile of shavings that resulted.

I started making the deck fittings using polypropylene webbing. I'm melting the ends to form loops with small square flanges formed using a mold. Linked pictures show how I did it. The idea came from Joe Greely at Redfish Kayaks. The loop will be passed through small slits cut into the deck. A bead of RTV around the flange will ensure a watertight seal.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44328302@N00/sets/72157603448129851/

I also laid up some blanks to use as fittings. I did one flat for webbing and a round one for deck lines or bungees. The tooling parts were formed from blocks of wood and covered either with packing tape or saran wrap was used as a release film. Here are some pictures of the process.

Here is a "re-enactment" of the sandwich after considerable triming and release from the mold.

The finished product.

Here is a shot of the flat webbing fitting...re-enacted.

And the finished product. These will be cut into shorter pieces and glued to the deck or hull.

After a long break, I finally got back out in the garage to work on my kayak. The moment I had been dreading had arrived. Time to make some cuts in the deck for the hatches. On the front hatch, I used a hand saw to get things started. On the rear hatch, I resorted to plunging the blade using a jig saw. I think the plunge method is actually easier. The hand saw was difficult to start and tended to widen the kerf as I plunged.

I am laying up the hatch lips with 8 layers of 4 ounce fiberglass cloth. I started with a generous fillet of thickedn epoxy, with wood dust for color. This photo shows a test run. If I achieve this profile all around, I'll be happy. This shows a 1/4" deep groove and a 5/16" gasket. For the final product, I'm going with an 1/8" channel and a 1/4" gasket

To make the lip, I taped the hatch in place then, covered the underside of the deck with clear packing tape. I then stuck the gasket around the edge of the hatch. The black lines are for reference to ensure that the layup creates a large enough flange. At this point, I coated the entire surface with floor wax, including the gasket.

Here is a shot of the layup.

Here is a cleaned up hatch lip.

Since my last post, I've managed to get the cockpit coaming pretty well completed. I've proven the clamp rule again. I could have used about 5 more! In these pictures, I hot glued a ring of vertical strips to the cutout edge. The strip pieces are glued to each other with Elmers. I then added a layer of fiberglass to the outsid of the ring, making a generouse fillet with some heavy rovings from some fiberglass matting.

In the photos, I have wrapped five layers of Ash and Walnut around the coaming riser. I used Gorrilla glue to glue the strips to each other in case the bottom of the ring doesn't get perfectly sealed with epoxy.

Here are some pictues of the results. The front of the coaming had too tight of a radius, so I cut the long strips at an angle and started another course of strips. I think it looks pretty cool.