Slim Chants

I’ve been shopping for wood, in a number of places. I checked out Home Depot and Rona and all they have is knotty. It’s expensive, too. I checked out some specialty places and they have what I want but it is even more expensive. After some intensive research I found a backyard furniture guy who gets the stuff in by the truckload, in varying lengths. It’s nice clear stuff and he sells it cheap. I picked up enough wood for two boats and and a paddle and it set me back only $67.00.

I went shopping for fabric on Saturday. First and as it turned out, last stop was Len’s Mill Store on Queen Street in Cambridge. I purchased 7 yards of white 8 oz polyester rip-stop fabric for $7.29 / yard. I also picked up a spool of mono-filament nylon quilting thread. Total including tax was $51.

I decided on polyester after a lot of research into what materials others have used. There is much debate on the issue. The original boats were made with sealskin. Modern boats use various materials, including vinyl, nylon (both rip-stop and ballistic), the aforementioned polyester (Dacron® is often mentioned), cotton, hemp and so on. In New Zealand polyester is most common, due to availability. Polyester has good shrinkage properties and when coated with urethane seems to have adequate strength and abrasion resistance. With the exception of nylon it is also about as light a material as I’m likely to find. As weight is a primary consideration in the design and construction of this project I elected to go with polyester.

I will be using a urethane finish on the polyester skin, after misting and shrinking with a hot iron. For colouring I will probably use a pigmented urethane, diluted with clear, to hopefully achieve some translucency. The alternative is to use artist’s oil paint as a pigment.