Decals

Create a few decal options to put under the fiberglass. These were printed on tissue paper with a laser printer.

More Cutting and Gluing

Marked out the sheer and bilge panels during the week and cut one side of the sheer panel out. Also cut the pine in half for the other sheer clamp and scarfed them together. Cut the 1:8 scarf on the drop saw set to just over 7 degrees.

Bilge Panel Glued Together

Cleaned up the shear panel joins and then cut the scarf on the bilge panels and glued them. Still need to cut out and scarf the short end bits yet though.

Shear Panel Scarf Glued

Glued the two sets of shear panels together this morning before work. Got the epoxy mix a bit better this time with a better consistency of the thickened glue. Did both sides at the same time - clamping one on top of the other with plastic in between.

Base Trimmed & Shear Clamp Cut

Cleaned up the bottom scarf with a scraper and then cut down close to size with a hand saw. Planed the remainder back to the fair lines. Also cut the shear clamp timber to size, and made one of the scarf's for the shear panel. Purchased 42x19 pine for the shear clamp and cut it in hand to eventually be 19x19. Did much better with the scarf on the shear panel. Nice and clean and was quick to do with the hand plane.

Sheer Clamp

Purchased timber (radiata pine) for the sheer clamps today. I got 3m long pieces of 42x19mm, so I need to cut the pieces in half and plane to 19x19mm.

Bottom Scarf Glued Together

Glued the bottom pieces together tonight. First time I've used the epoxy, so I hope it's all ok. Probably could have made it a bit thicker, but I didn't know how quickly it would start to go off. Held the joint down with some sand buckets and bricks.

Scarfing...

Finally got some time to spend on the kayak. Had been busy finishing a bathroom vanity. Scarfed the bottom pieces tonight and will hopefully glue them sometime in the next few days. Used a plane and while it took a while the results look good.

More Cutting

Cut out the other bottom piece yesterday. Also had a little play with the plane to see how easy it will be to trim to final shape. Quite easy it turns out, which is good. Also had a quick play with the scarf which will be hand planed.

The First Incision...

Started cutting the plywood yesterday between some other jobs. Cut two sheets of 4mm ply into strips that will be scarfed together for the sides. Also cut around one half of the bottom on the 6mm sheet.

Bottom Panels

Marked out the bottom panels onto the 6mm sheet if ply. Plans are in imperial so marked out to inches rather than converting all the numbers. Got a nice fair line going on which was good.

Plywood & Plans

Laid out the plywood ready for the first markup.

First Materials Arrive

The first materials for the kayak arrived today. Dropped to my door by Robert, the owner of Stray Dog Boatworks. I ordered the 6L Bote-Cote epoxy kit, filler powder, epoxy pumps, 1 sheet of 6mm Gaboon Marine Ply and 3 sheets of 4mm Gaboon plywood. Enough to get me started marking out, cutting and scarfing...the timer is now running :)

Look

This is the look I think I will go for - white bottom with blue stripe, and varnished top. I found a set of pictures on Flickr on a very impressive Mill Creek 16.5 build. Link is here.

The Plans Arrive...

Ordered the plans on Wednesday from Denman Marine in Tasmania and they arrived today. Will give them a good read and then start to track down materials.