Now it's time for some details. Things like hatches and deck lines and skegs and seats and stuff. Lets start with the hatches. Most builders recommend hatches with straps holding them down. Some suggest commercial hatch covers like VCP rubber hatches. They work very well and give you that production look. Not for my boat at all. I don't want something ugly and functional, I want beautiful and clever and somewhat invisible that may or may not work. OK, I added the last bit to protect the ignorant. Me. I decided that everything on this boat has to be difficult if not damn near impossible to make. So elliptical hatches it is. First, figure out how big they should be. Hell, first learn how to draw an ellipse! Your boat plans will probably have a hatch template, but thats too easy. I copied my fiberglass boats' rubber hatch dimensions. Sort of. I made the rear hatch wider than the front hatch because the deck behind the seat is flat and I wanted arm room to adjust the skeg cable. ( I'll get to the skeg next )
I made up 1/8 inch birch plywood templates, kerf cut them, and hot glued them to the deck. I then scribed a line and carefully used a very sharp scrolling blade for my jig saw to start the kerf of the hatch. I started with the back hatch and didn't get the prettiest entry hole. I built up the divot later with some epoxy. It didn't really work. The front hatch was better, and once I started the hole, I got out the jiggy saw and set her at about 30 degrees and cut the rest. Very carefully.
I didn't want straps holding down my hatch covers, and I didn't want to use rare earth magnets because they tend to screw compasses with in about a mile radius of the boat. Maybe not quite a mile, but you catch my drift. You do catch my drift, don't you? I designed latches out of cedar and spruce and high molecular weight plastic and a spring and a bicycle shifter cable sheathed in 1/4 inch pneumatic tubing. And a hunk of 1/4 inch plexiglass. See the picture below? Aren't I clever? The ex-wives didn't think so.
The recessed lip that holds the weather stripping that I really hope is water tight, is made out of fiberglass. I know that might be hard to read, but I don't care. These recessed lips are an idea from that guy from One Ocean kayaks, Valcav. I think thats his name. Any way, they were tricky to build. So tricky that I made them three times. Use plastic shelf paper to line the inside of the deck as a mold release and use 3/16 closed cell weather stripping to create a channel for the 3/ 8 weather stripping that will be the actual seal. Outline the hatch shape with the stripping and lay up about six layers of fiberglass cut to follow the curves. I just used a bunch of two and three inch long pieces about two inches wide. Be really carefull to get all the air out of all the layers. The voids the air can leave behind are the reason I had to make three sets to get it right.
I installed my latches so the cable would have a straight run to the cockpit. That placed them at the end of the ellipse. I won't do this again. I'll mount the latch on the side of the ellipse, and they will probably seal better. At this writing, the boat hasn't left the shop, so I don't know if my hatches actually work. But they look sooooo cool that I almost don't care. When the boat is sinking because the hatches don't seal, ask me what I think then. I carved little handles to yank on, and made little cable stays out of some laminated pieces of scrap. Everything works great in my dry shop, and the latches are very stealthy.
I wanted a skeg in this boat. I have one in my other boat, and it makes going straight a dream. If you are a shitty paddler, or have a cross wind the skeg is a life saver. It will keep you on the straight and narrow even as you abuse whatever your favorite vice is. I promise. I wanted my skeg to do the following tricks. It should be water tight. I should retract if it hits anything and redeploy when clear. I wanted a single cable to operate it, and that cable was to connected to a peddle between the foot rests so there is no visible activator.
I spent a lot of thought dreaming up the skeg. I chose to have it drop down into a more surf style skeg if I get out in the ocean. It will retract to a more traditional position with a touch of the peddle. I used 1/8 inch birch plywood as a core and covered it in carbon graphite cloth for that high tech look. A few layers of epoxy sanded smooth under many coats of clear enamel made a pretty cool looking blade. I made the box out of 1/4 inch pine plywood, and coated that with epoxy to make it waterproof. I wanted the skeg to be spring driven and operated by a cable, so it required a water proof axle to accomplish that. I scratched my noggin for quite a while and then it hit me. A faucet bonnet is exactly sorta kinda what I needed. It was $5.95 CDN which is about 38 cents USD. It is made from brass so it's a tad heavy. I bought the smallest one out there, but it's still has some heft. I originally used a shock cord to drive the skeg. Shock cord from the chinese hardware store doesn't really work for long. It becomes mildly irksome cord very quickly, and had to be replaced. Lookee!!
So I replaced the not so shocking cord with a spring from the same hardware store. Galvanized and out of a spring assortment bag for $3.99 CDN. It works very awesomely. It does. The cable attachment hardware was also tricky to create, but I pulled it together and everything works fine. Connecting the skeg blade to the bonnet / axle was done with a cap screw that is installed though a small access hatch I made from a two liter Pepsi bottle top. Those plastic caps are everywhere, so I'm confident I won't lose it. See?
Here is the puppy in action.
I built the combing out of laminated cedar and 1/8 inch birch plywood bent around a half form. I repeated this task three times till I got right. Arguably it still isn't right, but it's done so that is all we will say about that. I also bent and laminated a rim for the combing that was ripped in half after completed. It was definitely the hard way to build a combing. In fact, every other way looks easier and I'm sure would take a fraction of the time. But I choose the hard way and it looks like a million bucks if you squint your eyes a bit. It was time consuming and just a little bit frustrating to get that baby together. I needed a creative solution for cutting the combing lip too small. It looks like this
Heres another picture of the same process.
I mixed up some micro balloons and chopped silica and put it in the very ends of the boat to give me something to drill through for the rescue / carry handles. I drilled a 5/8 inch hole at the bow and stern just an inch or two from the stems. I then cut a hunk of spruce dowel, drilled it out to 3/8, and capped those dowels with ebony. They ebony is rock hard, so the rope won't wear it out ever. The ebony also looks tres` cool. We talk like that in Canada. Tres` tres` tres` cool.
I wanted light weight foot rests, so after buying two sets, I decided to make my own out of mini cell foam. I used the blocks you buy to put your kayak on your roof. Of your car, silly. I shaped these to the side of the hull and used industrial strength velcro. Velcro also holds my skeg pedal in place and allows for position changes. Readjusting the foot blocks takes a little while longer than foot pegs, but the weight difference is totally worth the effort. It's not like I'm gonna let anyone else paddle this boat for longer than a few minutes so positioning is a non-issue. Heres a peek.
The one thing I didn't build was the seat. I ordered a seat from the boat designer, Joe Greenley from Redfish Kayaks. It is made from mini-cell foam and weighs nothing. Really. It floats as though gravity doesn't exist. It's kind of spooky but very comfortable and well designed.
You should really consider deck lines. I did, and decided to hell with deck lines. I want a boat that is all sexy looking and naked of distracting safety features like rescue lines and deck rigging. Safety? Feh.
Meh,even..
Think Hot Rod. No roll bar, open wheels, no air bags.
Once all the details are covered or prepared, it's time to marry the two halves together. This is not such an easy thing to do. Or it isn't that hard at all. It really depends on who you talk to. What you don't want to do is leave the hull off the forms for very long. It can contract and become tricky to match the deck. Like the 'oh my God, I'll never get these things to line up' tricky. You will, but it might take awhile......
No comments:
Post a Comment