Cross Sections Cut Out & Started a Kayak for Me

On the weekend, I had the cross section blueprints printed out at Staples. Paige and I cut them out. I had her do the rough cut outs and I finished them to the exact size.

To transfer the templates to plywood, I first tried taping down the paper (on the interior cutout area) and going over a corner edge with a black magic marker. My thought was that the paper would block the ink and leave me with a clear indication of what should be cut (the where the marker was on the wood). I didn't count on the ink spreading and seeping through the paper. I next simply drew along the edges of the paper. As much as I could, I held the paper down and tried to keep it as tidy as possible. Pulling up the paper revealed that it worked out pretty well.

I marked each cross section in the middle and along the top edge to indicate which kayak it was for and which cross section it was (e.g. "Flea 3"). Comically, I ended up with two "Tour 3" cross sections. I had to go back to my original print files to figure out that I mislabeled #5. Oops!

Together, using my pull saw, Paige and I cut the plywood down to a smaller size. Before turning in for the evening, I got each of the cross sections rough cut-out using the jig saw.

The next day, I started in on the finer cutting of each cross section. My plan for Paige was to keep her busy with some minor sanding. She did good and only lost focus a few dozen times! I decided that I'd brave having her help by squeezing the jig saw trigger and got bravery by letting her (help) steer it. There were lots of warnings and a few heart-stopping moments, but she did well. We did have to stop once and have a long and fairly excited talk about not putting her hand below the wood while the saw is cutting. But, in the end- we still both have our 10 fingers and both eyes.

I got far enough that I started drilling out the interior of one of the Paige's forms. I'm using a 5/8" wood boring bit (because I don't have the recommended 5/8" Forstner bit) and found that I'm tearing out the back of the wood. Taping up the backside and being gentler when punching through has helped a bit, but it's still not ideal. I swapped e-mails with Bryan a bit and he suggested maybe clamping the wood to be drilled to a scrap piece of wood. If I can scare up some clamps, I'll give that a shot.

I also took a wood rasp/file and rounded the edges anywhere that the skin would touch or rub and anywhere that Paige would come in contact with. After I filed down the edges, I took some course sandpaper on a sanding block and cleaned up the edge a bit. Officially, I have 1 cross section complete!

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And, in other news- the references above to the "two kayaks" and "Tour 3" mean that while I was in my Visio-mood, I went ahead and drew up the cross sections for the Tom Yost Sea Tour 17R. While I have the plywood, jig saw and whatnot out, I've gone ahead and started the cross sections for a kayak for me.

• Offsets converted to millimeters
• Cross Sections Blueprints on 36" x 48" paper
• List of Costs for project
  (I'm keeping this specific to purchased made solely for the Sea Tour 17R; anything that was purchased jointly is going to the Sea Flea 11 cost.)