Baidarka building

I'm building a skin on frame Aleut Baidarka at the Skinboat School in Anacortes. The first step is to try out a variety of kayaks to see what characteristics are suitable for my purposes. The width plays a big part in the roll stability and the length and rocker affect the tracking and maneuverability of the kayak.

I paddled all of these (and dumped the red one getting in) and opted for stability over speed and good straight line tracking over maneuverability. The green one was closest to what will meet my needs.  I'll mostly be paddling up and down Saratoga Passage and going in fairly straight lines.  Mine will be slightly shorter, but the same width.

Back at the shop I started taking the roughed out parts and sanding them to final shape.

These parts will form the bow and stern assemblies, and frame the upper deck. The frame pieces are cut from naturally bent branches of cedar so the grain follows the shape of the part.

Aleut Baidarka

I'm going to Anacortes to the skinboat school (skinboats.org) to start building a kayak tomorrow!

Cascade Lake, Orcas Island

We took the canoe with us to Orcas Island. Dana and I gave Laura a ride around the lake on a perfect day. 

Launch day

We took the canoe to the WCHA NW Chapter spring meeting at Lost Lake. Ours was among about 30 wood and canvas canoes. It was so exciting to finally get the canoe in the water after 67 years in a barn, garage or basement. 

Ready to launch

Well, here it is.  Lots of scraping, sanding, steaming and bending, nailing, painting and varnishing.  Made a whole lot of shavings, sawdust, sweat and a bit of blood too.  The first launch in 67 years will be this weekend at the WCHA Northwest Chapter spring meet.

Keel and nameplate installed

Here are the last bits that were added.  The original keel is long gone, but I do have a metal strip that was probably used as a stem band.  It was pretty crude, and not original, so I replaced it with the standard brass half round strips.  The keel is oak with a cove cut into the mating surface, filled with bedding compound to seal the screw penetrations every other rib.

The nameplate was originally black except for the raised lettering, border and embellishments. I tried to restore it to that state, but the raised features are not very prominent, making that task very difficult.  I put a black patina on the whole surface and tried to polish just the raised areas, but ended up with this.

Finish coat of paint

Almost ready for the water

I brushed on Epifanes yacht enamel #16 red.  This is the greatest paint.  With a quality brush, it really flows out nicely.  We debated for a long time what color to paint the canoe.  I'm pretty sure the original color was green, but there was red paint on the trim. In places there were layers of red and green.  Looking at other canoes, the green ones faded into the landscape and brighter colors stood out more.  I've always liked red cars, red bikes and now I really love this red canoe.

Primer on the hull

Ready to spray primer, with the garage all draped in plastic.

Here's the hull after sanding the primer, just before painting. 

Aft Seat Caning

Here's the aft seat with the horizontal and vertical canes strung.

And here it is with the diagonals added in.

Caning the first seat

I thought caning the seat would be an afternoon's work.  After all, they are rather small and how hard could it be?  It ended up taking something like 8 or 10 hours for one seat.

Starting the caning process.  This is the first time I ever did this, so I had to keep the instruction book handy.

The first three layers are really quick because there's no weaving involved.  Two vertical layers and one horizontal

After 4 layers it starting to go a bit slower.

The first diagonal weave took hours.  You can only pull it through so many weaves at a time, so each strip takes 3 or 4 pulls through. The next day a mysterious blister appeared on my thumb and it took a moment to recall what could have caused it.

All finished, except for the edge trim.

Detail of the weave and edge trim

The final product.  I'm planning on a thin coat of varnish on the top side only, although this is a subject of much discussion on the wood canoe forums.