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.

I’ve begun shopping for materials for the Sea Rider ST Greenland Qajaq. First on my list is the plywood for the cross-sections. The design calls for marine-grade plywood, free of voids. In a pinch, any exterior-grade, good on two sides should do. But for maximum strength I really wanted a good Russian Birch ply.

Yesterday afternoon I checked the Home Depot by Sportsworld in Kitchener/Cambridge and they had none. Today I ventured out to the location in Waterloo and sure enough they had two pieces of 2′ X 4′, 11mm 9 ply Russian Birch. I bought both sheets for about $18 apiece. These will do fine for the cross-sections. I’m going to mark out the dimensions tonight for cutting this weekend. Stay tuned for my post on that, including pictures.

I’ve decided to build a kayak. It all started last summer when I decided to buy a canoe. One of my favourite artistic pursuits is nature and landscape photography and I decided what better way to find inspiration than to set out in a canoe.

After much research and shopping around I settled on a nice used Scott 16′ fibreglass Prospector that I found in Dunnville. The boat was in nice condition and came complete with paddles for the grand sum of $350.00. I talked the gentleman down to $300 and drove home the proud owner of the Maggie Mae.

I managed to get a couple of paddles in before winter and this summer planned a canoe camping trip on Joe Perry Lake in Bon Echo Provincial Park. We had a lovely time and the boat served well. But she weighs in at about 67 lbs., a bit much for the 500m portage to the lake. I’m not called Slim Dude for nothing, and though I’ve been cycling and working out, the portage was brutal. This will not work for solo outings. I’ve quickly developed a longing for a lighter boat.

I had a look around at light-weight canoes and they sure are pretty but conversely, they sure ain’t cheap. Kayaks are an option so I had a look at those too. But most of what is out there is also quite expensive, and is also quite heavy. Being a handy guy I had a look around at the various DIY solutions documented on line and came across some absolutely gorgeous hand made boats. The Greenland Qajaq in particular is much lighter than commercially available boats and much easier to build when comapred with stitch and glue or cedar strip designs. It turns out you can build one for about $200-300.

After looking over the many designs available on the web I have settled on a Sea Rider ST design from Tom Yost’s excellent on line Kayak Builder’s Manual. I’ll be using ballistic nylon for the skin, painted with many coats of polyurethane. Apart from that I am planning to stick pretty closely to the existing design.