The Kayak is DONE! 

Last winter I started building a Kayak.  I always like to challenge myself to see what I can do, I am a firm believer that you can do anything if you try, and you need some sort of hobby outside of work. Since I don't sail much in the winter; why not build a boat!

I cheated just a little, I ordered a kit.  It is called stitch and glue... I wish I took more photos of the beginning process, heck I didn't take any!  The kit comes in an 8 foot box, and it becomes a 17 foot boat... it was a LOT of pieces.  It is amazing how quickly it came together and formed the shape of the boat. You start off gluing the panels to length and then drill a million holes to stitch it together.  You stitch the kayak together with wire and then glue the seams; it looks like a porcupine when it is drying.  After the epoxy sets up you cut and remove the wires.

That's a shot of the inside of the hull with forms still in place, they got removed in the next step, you can see the deck upside down next to it with the seams taped.

Above the hull is turned over and the layer of glass and epoxy is done, there were a few filler coats of epoxy after this.

Above: Here it is with the deck being fitted, once the seam is fine tuned the deck gets glued on with more epoxy and then glassed to the hull, (Man my Garage was a mess!) PS: the yellow kayak hanging in the back of the garage is for sale!

Here is the boat, with the deck glassed to the hull, seams filled and taped, it is almost a boat, but there is so much more left to do.  The copious amount of clamps were to get the inside coaming attached to the cockpit, the coaming is a lamination of 4 pieces of wood laminated in fiberglass. You can NEVER have enough clamps!

Below it looks like a boat! The coaming is done, it looks pretty (from a few feet away) but there are hours of sanding left

From this point it was literally hours of sanding to even out the epoxy, it is not easy to get epoxy to lie flat on a surface that is not flat to start with! And it took at least 24 hours for each coat to dry. The next step was to actually start cutting it... this was a painful step, but I wanted to make it a touring kayak so I needed hatches and bulkheadsThere it is with the hatches cut, the lips for the hatches clamped into place which was another lamination of wood and fiberglass, if you look close you can see the rear bulkhead installed

You can also see it is not as pretty now, that was the hours of sanding!  But it is almost ready for varnish. I lost count but I think I put on 4 coats, parts of it have 5.

Below is the end pour... you cant really see what I was doing, but It looked so big up against the side of the house I had to snap a picture.  Each end was filled with epoxy so I could drill for a handle

Almost done! (below) the kayak has all the varnish the deck hardware, handles and it is just missing the hatches, the hatches were still drying. That's my 14 year old that claimed the boat already... someone tell him to mow the lawn! (and get a hair cut!)

The Maiden voyage:  IT FLOATS, and it paddled well, even through the chop of the Metedeconk River on a Sunday.

That's my son paddling back in off the river (above) and My wife below, I actually built it for her...

It was a fun project, and the pictures really do not show how pretty it is, all the grain of the wood matches on each pannel

I think I may have to start another one soon, this time for me!

Have a great week!

Rob

Robert Rauf