...and another thing

If you're going to move house while building a kayak, try to bring all the equipment with you.

It seems that during the moving, I have somehow lost the bottles of epoxy resin. I'm not sure if they were lost, or I threw them away, because from memory they were damaged and leaking from the original post from the US, but long story short - I thought I had them, and I don't.

I've emailed Pygmy to see if I can get some more sent out, awaiting their reply. It's not going to slow me down too much just yet, as I can keep working on the stitching, but hopefully I can sort something out soon with Pygmy's help.

If I did have to see a silver lining in this though, I'll be able to change the cure speed of the hardener. When I originally ordered the kit, I selected the slow speed epoxy hardener because summer in Canberra was coming, and the temps were normally in the 35-38 degrees (celsius) range, I figured I'd need the extra time. Now, in Armidale, the temps are much lower and we're going into winter, where temps are closer to 10-15 celsius daily and down to below freezing overnight.

And another (another) thing. I think I settled on a name for the Coho - 'Warrego'. The name of the street we lived on when I started the build, and also the name of a river in Queensland. I reckon it fits well. Also got me thinking about maybe some pinstriping for the join of the deck to the hull. Food for thought for later on.

Lift off! The hull takes shape

So after a few years it's all action now. I've started stitching together the hull panels and it's taking shape surprisingly quickly.

Essentially, the process involves aligning the bow seam on the panels, and joining a few stitches to make sure the panels are in the right spot. After that, the holes are drilled and the panel loosely wired together in all the holes, every 6 inches.

After the first two left and right panels are wired together, it's essentially a rinse and repeat process, aligning the panels, wiring them loosely, and then tightening the wires on both sides at the time to firm up the rigidity of the hull lines. I'm halfway through the third panel at the moment, and it'd be fair to say the second wind of the construction process has arrived.

The panels within the hull are temporary support braces to make sure the profile of the hull is uniform and the chines don't bulge out or fall in. They're only wired at the keel at the moment, and are fairly annoying as they flop about and get in the way until they're wired to the rest of the hull. The wiring together doesn't happen until all 4 hull panels are in place, so until then they're just in the way.


I was going to make a comment about the bending over killing my back, but looks like I already covered that in an earlier post about Tip #5. Get a decent height workbench. In fact, as you can see from my pictures, 'workbench' is a bit of a stretch, and I'm still working on two fold out trellis tables.

Back... Again.

After my last post, there was a fair bit of no progress on the Coho. The partially completed boat was in mediocre storage in one of our sheds while we built a new shed, complete with a roof that didn't leak and a real concrete floor.

As of last week, the Coho is out of it's stale wrapping and back on the table. Unfortunately there is a some very slight water damage, and a family of mice had set up a nest in the wrapping, staining and eating into some of the timber. It' only superficial though and the boat is back into the fore of my mind.

Progress updates will continue as I get back into the build.

First of all is the bevelling of the shear edges where the deck and hull meet, and then the drilling of the holes for the wiring in the stitch and glue process.

I'm on a deadline now. We're in the last month of summer and the epoxy I ordered back in October 2010 is the slow cure type, designed for hot climates. It won't cure below 25 degrees celsius, and hence I need to get my act together while the weather is still hot enough to cure the epoxy.

Out of the wilderness...

After my last post Alex and I went through the protracted process of moving interstate. As such the partly finished boat has been in storage for the past 8 months or so.

We've now moved into an older cottage on 20 acres in rural NSW and while it has more space, less of it is covered and suitable for boat-building. For my workshop I've commandeered what I imagine used to be the garage which has a semi-leaking roof and dirt floor. The boat is still in its storage packaging to protect it from any rain etc, and over the next few weeks I'll continue unpacking all the components, epoxy etc and also putting some road base or similar on the floor so it's not as dusty.

One upside of the delay I thought of last week was that the slow curing epoxy that I got in the kit because I was going to be working in summer will now be suitable again as we're already into the first month of spring.

Incidentally, the Hawkesbury Classic is due to start next weekend (22nd October 2011), so if anyone is still reading this who is competing this year, good luck! All going to plan I'll see you on the water for next year's event.

Moving house

Just to complicate things, I've been offered a job back in my home town and as a result, my wife and I are moving 9 hours north.

This is going to make building the kayak, or moving it at least, very tricky. I still haven't yet started to stitch the strips together, so at the very least it will be easier to move a flat pack but I'll have to get my hands on copious amounts of bubble wrap and fragile stickers so the removalists don't ruin anything.

Seeing we'll be bunking with my folks for a few months until we find a place and sell our house, I'll be able to use Dad's shed to do some work after I head up there. He's got plenty of tools I can use, and has done this before, so the build should go a little more smoothly once I'm there.

Back after a short hiatus

With the Christmas break, rain, work and house renovations, my Coho has taken a bit of a back seat recently. Apologies to anyone who had been following me recently with no updates. Access to blogspot blogs has also been restricted on my work laptop for some reason so updating this now needs to be done at home rather than in my lunch hour.

Excuses aside, here's where I'm up to:

I finished doing the other sides of the deck panel joins like I mentioned I was pondering. I took a dose of my own rules and followed the instructions to the letter. Now there are just a few more brief steps before I can start stitching the panels together.
Tonight I reinforced the deck panels at the front of the entry hole. I'm sure there's a technical word for the entry 'hole' but for now, that's what it's called. Much more refined I'm sure.
This involved cutting a few pieces of 3 1/2 inch pieces of ply to size with a jigsaw and gluing them to the underside of the deck with an epoxy & wood flour mix about the same consistency as honey. This, I assume, is so that when using the deck to lever yourself into the 'hole' when entering the kayak, you don't punch your hands through the deck of the boat. You can see a few photos below.

Here's the wood flour & epoxy mix used to glue the deck reinforcements onto the deck. It's just epoxy using the same 2:1 mix as normal, but with wood flour mixed in. Wood flour as far as I know is a more sophisticated 'I'm a woodworker' term for fine sawdust.

As you may be able to tell, my new favourite container for mixing epoxy is old sliced pineapple tins. Perfect size.

Here's the cut-to-size ply about to be glued over the  deck. I think I may have joined the reinforcing ply a little too far forward from what it should have been. When it's cured I'll see if I need to put another one closer to the 'hole'.

Here's the reinforcement in relation to the hatch hole. There should be room for another strip if I need to put it in. I guess time will tell.

As an aside, I'd forgotten how nice it is to be back out in the shed listening to music and working away. Really  relaxing and a pretty sweet way to unwind from a job that's starting to give me the shirts.

Finally finished the joins on the hull.

Tonight I finally finished the trimming and filing back of the epoxy and glass at the joins of the strips. Here's a hot tip (Number 5 if I remember correctly) for you - if you're 6'3 and building one of these, get a work bench higher than your average trestle table. Bending over for even half an hour to do this work makes you feel a little worse for wear in the spine. The dog definitely appreciates the attention while I'm re-sorting my vertebrae though.

I've still got the other sides of the joins to epoxy for the deck, but I'll go through the instructions to see if I can get this stage done around the other stages of construction or if it's better off biting the bullet and doing it all now. I've got a that niggling feeling in the back of my mind that I should follow the instructions word for word because the fellow who wrote them obviously knows what he's doing, but another little voice that says 'go on, get things going!' I really want to start seeing a hull take shape. Insert saying or quip about patience being a virtue or something.

The only reason not to that I can think of now is that there may not be room to finish the deck joins once the hull is sitting on the workbench and taking up all the room. That's it.

No more rain in the last few days to speak of, but the month before that was crazy, I don't think I've seen so much water fall out of the sky before. Ever. Heading away for 2 weeks for a Christmas/New Year Break on Friday, I might get a little more done before Friday but probably won't get around to writing about it.