In the pictures, the picture on the left is the full view of the kayak from the stern; the picture on the right is the full view from the bow. It really looks like a boat!!!
The first thing I did this weekend was to establish the keel line. The lowest point on the keel is at cross section 2. I asked a silly question (about how to draw the keel down to the lowest point) on the Kayak Builders Bulletin Board and got a very pleasant "RTFM" response from Tom. So, I've duck taped the kayak into position I put paper between the wood and the duck tape to try and keep some of the sticky-gooeyness from the tape from leaving a residue on the wood.
It took me 2 tries on paper and the assistance of a
Princess Glue Stick to get the bow stem worked out right - but, I got there. I mostly followed Tom's directions for
drawing the stem plates. I cut my
gunwales to 33" from the first cross section and the
chines to 24". In hindsight, I wish I had left the gunwales a little longer. The stern was
25 1/2" for the gunwales and 19" for the chines.
For the stem plates themselves, I cut them out of the interior pieces from the cross sections. Paige again
helped cut with the jig saw. Because the 1/2" drywall is thinner than the 3/4" keel - I trimmed 3.5mm off of either side of the keel tapered back by about an inch. In doing this, I accomplished my first kayak building injury -- I used the bonsai saw to cut these pieces off and somehow nicked the back of my hand. It sounds worse than it is, but it was a first.
The other thing I worked on this weekend was the cutting the deckridges. I was a bit apprehensive cutting the notch in the cedar - mostly I wasn't sure how to approach it and certain that I was going to miss-cut and hack the notch off. To determine what to cut, I set the deckridge into the notched out area on the cross section. I drew along the side and across the top of the deckridge. This showed me what to keep. I flipped the board over and drew clean/straight lines. I was spastic enough to put
Xs in the part that I was cutting out. As for cutting too much, I used the japanese pull saw and tried to be as careful and slow as possible. It actually worked out spectacularly well.
I only ran my deckridges between cross sections 1 & 2 and between 3 & 4. This meant I didn't have any supports between cross section 1 and the bow or between cross section 4 and the stern. I've been keeping most of the bits of wood that I've cut off. I grabbed a couple of short pieces of the gunwales and chines and decided to fashion cross-supports in the bow and stern areas. These were actually pretty fun to figure out how to cut because they had to follow the gunwales inward tilts.
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Sea Flea 11 Project Costs
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