Thread: looking at building a timber strip kayak, just a few questions

2 layers of side strips are up, and homebrew bungee straps shall make an appearance tomorrow.... (shocked at the price of bungee straps in stores...$6 each for 600mm cords.... ....BAH!

twine and a $10 trailer net works beautifully, 50 hooks and a helluvalotta elastic cord

well lads, it's been a while hasn't it?

i'm no longer a furniture maker, the boss went whacko, i quit, moved the kayak, and it now has a new home, this project is now hand tools only, just the way a project like this should be

sooo.... to kick it off again

using hotmelt now instead of staples

have made friends with the heavy duty zip ties from mitre 10

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bbbbbb....uuuu....ttttt you're in grave danger of winding up with a kayak, not a lapstrake rowboat which we all know is the pinnacle of boat building

Onya mate.

Enjoying the build? I hope so. If you follow my experiences at all you'll understand that it's an emotional rollercoaster with the good shoved into the same bag as the bad.

Seriously, I'm in awe of strip plank builders. I'm a basic woose and aspire to lapstrake hulls. Whatever, I love reading love stories like this (deliberate aliteration).

Richard

On a more serious note, and bearing in mind that I find myself strangely attracted to strip plank, could you elborate more on the 'hotmelt' theory? I too love my hot glue gun but as yet, it's only been a peripheral tool. Bearing in mind that I've got an incipient predeliction for strip planking, could you explain how you've used the brute?

Richard

Fathers - when your wee daughter asks you to cut miscellaneous bits from your scrap bin into a bed/trolly/car for their toy cat, and you then have to find some way of joining all those horrid bits of useful timber into said item, the hot glue gun provides a useful alternative to nails -- guess how I know this

lol daddles, i go from extreme to extreme

this may be a strip built kayak, the next being a clinker built longship

absolutely loving the build


that hotmelt gun is just being used as a clamping device, (if you look at some of the photo's you will see blobs of glue on the joins, this is the hotmelt, it is in no way structural, just temporary) the glue i am using takes 3 hours to cure.... (indestructible though) but the hotmelt takes 30seconds, just stitching it over the top of the strips, walking along at 6-12" distances, those clamps you see are only on there for 10 minutes at most just clamp, hotmelt, wait 2 minutes, remove clamps, next

for the middle 2 strips i glued them down to the chipboard to gain the shape i wanted, once all of the angles are cut, i will mark those middle strips to the chipboard, pop all of them off, clean the glue, then gladwrap over all the exposed chipboard, nail a couple of locators into them back down into place and proceed glueing the rest of the strips

also

you will notice the ends are incomplete, i've left them open because i will cut them, they are receiving a solid piece of spanish cedar with an aussie red cedar veneer over it to give a nice texture change (in other words, i was lazy and didn't want to cut the angles necessary to make it work at the ends)

used nails for this part of it, too impatient for the hotmelt, the effects are nice

each side took 5 hours to fit, 2.5 hours to glue

deck rasped, cockpit cut, ends cut

bit plain ain't it.... all part of the plan

sorting out the timber for the cockpit riser (splash deterrent) and then slicing down a roll of gaffatape to the thickness of the timbers, for the decorations.... will have a feel for a heap of different designs on it and photograph as i go with each design about time to go get a decent pull saw

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