kayak-design-04-final-2000v031

kayak-design-04-final-2000v021

kayak-design-04-final-2000v011

kayak-design-04-final-2000v041

Hi there all,

I am about to begin a building project of a stich and glue Kayak.

I wanted to share the experiance, first a little bit of back ground.

I have built a few small craft a dingy or two and wanted to build my own design of a strip plank Kayak, it is still under construction pending lots of free time.

I felt progress was slow so I have with the aide of a few friends taken the patterns from the frame of the strip plank Kayak with sheets of plastic then copied these profiles on to  CAD.

We have spent a lot of time with adding all the nessisary hardware to the kit, the idea being that we do not want to have to purchase or make any fiddly bits.

We have included all the hatches, combing, foot rest and fixtures for securing the ropes to the deck. The CAD files also has holes for cable ties pre cut that line up to ensure the kayak is straight which seams to be a common isue for stitch and glue kayaks, No skeg will be required to correct any possible flaw in the hull.

I come up with odd ideas from time to time and one I have is that the Nose cone is always a difficult part as there are often 6 very skinny bits of ply all comming to a point. So I am building one with a nose cone made by laminating 25 odd layers to get a solid nose, this will also have a landing to bring the bottoms, side and top sheet to.  It has taken nearly a 1/2 a sheet of 12 mm ply to cut so I hope its worth it I am a bit concerned about weight, but most people fill the nose cone with epoxy any how so I expect it will be similar to the standard Kayak.

The ply is now ready and awaiting delivery so I will show some pictures soon of the raw materials ready for construction, with a very excited me beside them.

I have attached some pdf pages of the cut out sheet layouts and I also have some design concepts showing colour options.

I believe I will choose a Black Hull and natural deck with Black ropes and black bungy cord.