Thursday, January 04, 2024

Consultation with Boatcraft: Alignment issues at Puzzle Joints









So these are the photos I showed Rob at the Boatcraft shop. Some of the puzzle joints align. Some do not. So I am off by millimetres at the stern and also slightly at the bow although it is not as obvious. By this point I am worried and I flip the kayak's hull to check how straight the hull is. To my eye, it looks pretty straight, although at the top panels at the bow and stern there looks to be a minor twist.

Rob agreed the puzzle joints didn't align. But photos are tough to evaluate alignment. It wasn't bad enough to recommend that I unfasten the frames and redo the alignment. So I continued on with the build.

When it came time to mount the deck on the hull, there was a minor twist at the bow and stern, not at the water line but at the top panels. That required some extra wires to get the deck and hull to match up properly. You probably can't see it on the finished kayak but I know it is there.

So pay attention to your puzzle joints alignment all through the stitching of panels and especially when stitching in the frames.

End of April: Alignment Problems at Puzzle Joints








 

So I may have been over working an issue. 16 feet of panels and you can see that panels are slightly offset from each other at the bow and stern (just mm but noticeable). Since you wind up sanding the bow and stern anyways and then add a thick bead of thickened epoxy as stems to both, this may have not been a problem.

But the problem originates as the puzzle joints in the middle of the kayak. The manual stresses that the puzzle joints must align from one panel to the next. If you look closely, you will see that mine don't. Hence the offset  at bow and stern. The problem is accumulative. If the first and second rows of panels are misaligned that error carries along with panels further up. 

The panels are cut precisely and when you get the puzzle joints perfectly aligned so do the bow and stern joints. My problem that when I started to install frames and bulkheads, drilling holes for wiring and then wiring in the frames was done without enough attention to alignment at the puzzle joint. It was easy enough to tug panels back into alignment before the frames went in. Not so after. 

So I headed in to see Rob and the crew at Boatcraft to see how critical this problem was.

Hull Assembly: Mid April, Wiring in Frames



The manual and Timber Boatworks YouTube videos  https://www.youtube.com/@timberboatworks do a detailed description of drilling panels for wiring and then wiring panels. This is the hull before gluing seams between panels. This came along pretty fast, probably 20 hours with clumsy hands. Note the electrical tape around forms and bulkheads. The tape worked well in preventing forms getting glued in when gluing seams got started. Note I used copper wire for some of the stitching. But it only worked where tension was low.

Tuesday, January 02, 2024

Layout: First Days, The Things You Must Pay Attention To





 

Boxes with panels/fiberglass are 8 feet long. Box of supplies, expoy resin and hardner, is about 1.5 X 1.5 X 1.5 feet. Very compact and easy to handle. 

Check the box's inventory. The manual tells you to start there. We found nothing missing but the process familiarized us with the pieces and how they fit together.

IMPORTANT POINT: When you lay the panels out for the first time, the manual  tells you to mark the panel's tabs which mark the locations where bulkheads and frames will be placed. We sanded a few off before marking them. It wasn't the end of the world. Other panels were marked for that frame. But it made placing frames inside the kayak more problematic than it should have been.

 READ THE MANUAL BEFORE YOU START. Particularly read the section you will be working on before you start that work. 

View the Timber Boatworks videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@timberboatworks 

The manual and the numerous videos are very detailed and if you follow them diligently, you will stay out of trouble. More importantly, the quality of your build will begin to match the eye candy in the Boatcraft store. READ THE MANUAL.

Boatcraft/Timber Boatworks have done an excellent job of detailing the build for their kayak kits in their manual and their videos. When I messed up, it was primarily because I had not followed the manual's instructions to the letter.  

STARTING OUT: The manual starts you off by building the kayak's seat. It serves as an intro project to the entire kayak build.  You can make mistakes on the seat and recover from them. Because of its shape, it looks like an intricate build (but it really isn't that hard). And by its completion, you will have mastered some motor skills you will use full on during the hull and deck assembly and fiber-glassing. 

6 in. Safety Wire Twist PlierIt is recommended that you pick up 6 inch safety wire twist pliers. Princess Auto has them at a reasonable price. You will do so much wire twisting that these will become your primary tool. You will use needle nose pliers often as well so have those too.

The other tool to get is a soldering iron. You will find it essential when removing wire stitches after gluing panel seams and bulkheads. You can try pulling the wires out with pliers but if they don't come with the first two or three tugs, heating the wire with the soldering iron saves your hands and avoids tear-outs. You should stop injecting epoxy in panel seams an inch or two away from the stitching wire. But epoxy runs, hands shake and at bow and stern, you want those seams glued solid before you remove wire stitches. So you will use the soldering iron often and speed up the dewiring process.

The manual recommends bevel sanding the inside edge of panels once you start to wire panels together. (See last picture). IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING, you might save yourself some time by bevel sanding all the hull panels before starting assembly. THAT ASSUMES that you know the difference between the inside and the outside of the hull (not easy at the panel stage). Make sure you know the difference; DOUBLE CHECK. OR you could be smart and follow along the steps as outlined in the manual.

Since the panels come in 8 foot lengths, they have be joined  to get panels 16 feet long. Timber Boatworks cuts their panels carefully with a CNC router. The panels are precision cut to exact lengths. And they have a patented puzzle joint that makes it impossible to join the wrong panels together. If you are having to force panels together, STOP.

You are not as pretty and as smart as you think you are. STOP and check whether you are putting the right panels together. STOP and read the manual to see which panels join to which panels and how they should join. STOP and watch the videos on how to join panels. Panels are cut from quality mahogany plywood, they are cut precisely and they go together reasonably easily but precisely. 

Finally, get a container of acetone. You will drip epoxy often and you want to remove it quickly before it soaks in where it should not be. This is especially true when filling joints and seams with a wood flour/epoxy mixture. If you don't remove it before it sets you have a blotch that can only be removed by sanding. My skills with an orbital sander were not great and I over-sanded some blotches down to the underlying layer on the mahogany plywood (creating a worse blotch). I wish I had know about the acetone before I started using the epoxy. I would have had a prettier build. Rona was the cheapest place for acetone.

  

The Motivation: Eye Candy






 Boatcraft's display of kayaks is eye candy for anyone who wants a kayak that paddles great, is light and will be loved by family long past the builder's days. 

The Anuri 16, my build for 2024, is the kayak in the middle of the last two photos.

Setup: March 2023, Sawhorse/Cradles




 Son-in-law and grandsons set up their garage for the build. Sawhorses/cradles were 40 inches (approx. 1 metre) high. That was an ideal height to work at when covered with a 2 foot X 8 foot plywood sheet for wiring panels and gluing seams.