Day 3

apparently blogger.com crashed and killed my post. :<

anyways, I went out again yesterday.

after a false start because I'm lazy when it comes to measuring I got the stemplates cut out, and got the keel lashed on without any trouble.



The chines gave me a little bit of trouble as they simply wouldn't bend enough, so in the end I cut some new one's that were a bit thinner and got them lashed on.



Next up was the arched deck beams, nothing really exciting to report here either... :P



so... more or less done with the frame now.

still need to do the masik, and coaming, and oil the frame, but tomorrow I'm gonna "skin" it with a tarp and go for a test paddle.

time spent day 3: 3½ hours
time spent total: 11½ hours (plus 2 hours due to breaking the gunwale)

Day 2

Finally got out to do some more building yesterday.

I went out after work and got started on the deck beams, I found that the jig from cunninghams book didn't quite work this time as the gunwales are far more curved, and it ended up a few mm wrong every time, so in the end I eyeballed it and managed to get them to fit well anyways.

after I had them cut out and screwed in (I'm a lazy builder, and tenons are beyond my capabilities) I decided to get started on bending the ribs.

I did not soak them this time, after comments on qajaqUSA told me it's not really neccesary, and I found that they were right.
the wood feels different, but I didn't get more breakages, however they held the bend better and didn't spring right back to straight, not sure if this is good or bad, but after an hour and a half I had all the ribs bent and fitted, with about 6 or 7 broken.





I never manage to get the end ribs quite right, while they're not "broken" there are always some small kinks in them, but in the end I'm just too lazy to bend the same rib more than 3 times.

Steambox:


Bending Jig (used no belt):

Day 1

Yesterday I started building a Greenland style Skin-on-frame Kayak for my girlfriend.

At around 1 PM we went to buy lumber, with a final bill of about 650 Swedish Crowns (65 euro)
The wood is primarily Spruce (Gran).



I got out the circle saw, and started ripping the planks for gunwales, deck ribs and chines/keel.



with the gunwales, chines/keel and deckribs cut to width i had two spare boards, apparently I overbought... :P

I started work on the gunwales, marking out all the deck rib locations, and mortises for the ribs, and got out the router to make the mortises.

When i built my first kayak I tried several different methods for making the mortises, with mostly a lot of trouble and time wasted.

This time I used the router, with a 6 mm drill (didn't have an 8 mm)and basically drilled 3 holes, and then connected them with the router. (when I tried just making it as one hole with the router it kept veering to the side and ruining it)
and then afterwards going over the holes again with an 8 MM chisel. (best investment ever)



So after about 5 hours of work i had all mortises cut so a piece of the rib stock fitted in, and the sheerlines and all such cut, and ready to be fitted into the forms.





As i was bending it, and asking my girlfriend to push the form a bit further in (when this picture was taken) I learned that 5 hours of work can be lost in a split second.



apparently one of the gunwales didn't quite like bending that far (seemed fine when I tested it before starting work on it)

fortunately, I had extras, the first plank I sawed up cracked when I tested it (more thuroughly this time)

but with my last spare plank I cut out a gunwale and spent about an hour and a half getting to the point I was before, and this time managed to get them into the forms without cracking them.



and of course, when I wanted to put my rib stock in water to soak, the tub I usually use had broken, so I have to buy a new one during the week and go out with it to soak the ribs.

Also, going away next weekend, so the deckribs, and bending will have to wait untill the weekend after.