Launching: July 4 , 2024

 Blue is now out at its home at Buck Lake, Alberta, Canada. It will be chasing walleye (pickerel) and jackfish as my grandson is a passionate fisherman.

But here are photos of Blue's first launch at the Leduc Boat Club where it wintered waiting for hockey season to end. The Leduc Boat Club is a terrific facility for those interested in canoe, kayak and dragon boat training and racing. It is on Telford Lake, Leduc, Alberta and offers summer camps for young people plus evening and weekend rentals for those wanting a paddle on Telford Lake.

Both grandsons tried it out, the youngest was in a kayak for the first time. 

 

 Now working on an Anuri 16

from Timber Boatworks / Boat Craft Edmonton Alberta Canada. The kits are complete, the manuals and YouTube videos are thorough and the build time is quick, even for a 73 year-old. 

Get to work.

 

 

Learnings: Photo Summary

The first posts in this series (January of 2024) have two videos of the completed kayak.

And the first post in this series provides the details of tools to get, ways to avoid my mistakes (acetone to wipe off over-applications, blotches and the danger of oversanding with orbital disc sander). 

The pigmented epoxy on the edge of the deck and the cockpit coaming took extra work. With my experimenting, it probably added two weeks to the build. But you could avoid some that by using my learnings (multiple layers of electricians tape to use as forms to contain shallow pours of pigmented epoxy).

So here are the photos that summarize the success of that and the errors of oversanding. 

The first photo asks my question of whether there is a twist to the bow of the kayak from not getting puzzle joints aligned at the centre of the kayak.

Final Day of Construction. Sept. 18, 2023

 So here are the photos of seat and lines, carry handles.

Installing Hardware: Lines

 With varnishing done, the kayak was flipped to removed newspaper protecting the graphite epoxy on the bottom of the hull.

Then it was installation of straps for the hatch covers and bungees,

Final Epoxy Coat and Varnishing

 The beginning of September was concentrated work on getting the final smoothcoat of epoxy on.

That was followed by five (5) coats of varnish. When I realized that the kayak's hull was not going to be pretty because oversanding, I decided to make the kayak robust.

So extra fiberglass tape on the keel, extra reinforcing at bow and stern, additional reinforcing on deck behind stern deck hatch, reinforced hatch covers plus building the stern up for a rudder installation in the future all added weight and hopefully robustness to the kayak. 

Hatch Covers

 The last week of August had work focused on assembly, fiberglassing of hatch covers. 

That was straight forward work although finding enough fiberglass to for hatches' undersides was a bit of a challenge. 

With that done, seat installation began. You need good fingers to handle the nuts and screws for that assembly. 

Finishing Work: Knee Braces, Cockpit Top Coaming, Day Hatch

 Installation of Knee Braces was straightforward. 

Installing the Day Hatch took some care since the graphite epoxy used to construct the spacers wanted to slump across the deck. Peanut consistency is important. Once the spacers had set up, some careful trimming with an utility knife got the spacers matching the shape of the deck hatch. Some of the bolts had to shortened as they were too long and would cut a paddler's hand when reaching into the day hatch. The instructions in the manual were very helpful for this step.

The top coamings were fully finished with pigmented epoxy and fiberglass before installing. That saved some time and also got a better effect for the pigmented epoxy. Using electricians tape as a kind of batten board around the outside edges of the coaming while sitting flat on the worktable allowed a shallow pour of the pigmented epoxy. So I got a better ripple effect on the coamings.

Applying Deck Fiberglass

 Placing the electrician tape on the hull just below the deck needs to be straight.

While it is true that the epoxied fiberglass will not stick to the electricians tape,  I wish I had put down a double layer. The fiberglass did stick in a few places where it hung below the tape.

When cutting the fiberglass above the electricians tape after it had cured, I should have flipped the kayak on its side so I had a better view of the junction to the tape and fiberglass. I left a thin line of electricians tape in a few places that got covered under the final layer of epoxy before I noticed it. More work.