Rick Mercer's Blog

Rick Mercer's Blog. Very funny satire, good election day noon-hour reading, nothing to do with boatbuilding.

It's Election Night in Canada! - Go vote!

The image at right was posted on the aforementioned Rick Mercer blog, credited to Doug Webber, and was used without permission.

First River Run in the Cross RIvers

I have been blabbing the last few posts about getting the CRs into production at the factory. Now its time to start showing them on the river.
Woody, Rob and I took off the for the Nolichucky the day I got back with the first production CRs. The level was a nice 3500 and it was 50 degrees in January. Can't beat that.


You all know Woody, but you might not know Rob. He is the brother of our president at Liquidlogic. He just recently moved to Asheville from Rhode Island so he could do some more paddling. Rob has been doing a bunch of creeking down here but hasn't ever been in a playboat so it was cool to see that the CR 125 was easy to handle for him.
Woody - 6'4", 240, 34" inseam, size 12 dogs. CR 250
Rob - 6'1", 175, 33" inseam, size 11 feet. CR 125


It was really nice to get in the production boat and know that we put together an awesome boat. The new foot cone and foot foam were super comfy. Hell Woody paddled the whole river barefoot just because he could. He kept saying, "dude my feet are even warm". The new hip pads are awesome. A screw driver and you can adjust and secure your hip pads completely bomber. No more loose hip pads. They don't slide, lose air, come unglued, or only sit in one place. I am nearly as excited about the new outfitting as I am about the new boats.


Woody and I will get the final production stats on the CRs up on the web as soon as possible.
Here is the video of the day running the Noli.
Cross Rivers on the Noli Video Link, Click This
Later
Shane

Here is a link to more photos, videos, and words and stats about the CRs.
Cross River Page Link, Click It

Yellow Cedar

The wood I am using for contrast is Yellow Cedar, Chamaecyparis nootkatensis. This wood is a pale yellow in colour, in contrast to the dark brown/red of the Western Red Cedar which makes up the rest of the hull. The name is a bit confusing as it is a cypress rather than a cedar (thanks to Rod for clearing that up for me). When I first started working with yellow cedar I was struck by the difference in smell and working characteristics as compared to the red cedar. I thought they were different varieties of the same thing so I expected some common ground in the wood characteristics. The yellow cedar has a more uniform appearance and texture, and is much less likely to split along the grain as I whittle a taper onto the end of a strip. The most striking difference though (other than appearance) is the smell. I expected something cedar-like in smell but being a cypress rather than cedar the smell is quite different.

The strips of yellow cedar I have (purchased from Orca Boats) are also of a much better quality than the red cedar strips (purchased from some guy off the net). The red cedar strips vary somewhat in thickness and width, and have places on most strips where the cove is not properly cut all the way, or where the bead is off center, or there are bumps along the bead. I gather that some of this is normal, and I did get a pretty good deal on the wood so I'm not dissapointed, but next time I may make my own strips or make use of the fancy new set up of the folks over at Kisseynew Canoe Co.

Bow Deck Stripped

Thanks to all who gave their input into the design for the deck. The design I decided on is something similar to "L" shown in a previous post. Below, I have stripped the deck so that the strips extend beyond what I have decided the border of the contrasting strips will be. To define a fair curve I am using a 1/4" piece of strip which is the bead cut off of one of the strips that was to become the center strips (the bead was cut off so that the strips could be laid on the deck cove outward in the same manner as the keel was stripped). This pattern by the way used up nearly all 114 feet of yellow cedar that I had. It was nip and tuck in the end with 6 feet or less left over.

Here I have roughly cut the strips back to the curving line. It still needs to be smoothed out. I might change the curve a little bit to make it a little more curvy but I need to sleep on it. Now that the bow is stripped, how about the addition of a figurehead?

The First Assembled Cross Rivers

I've been in the factory this week getting the CR molds broken in and ready to run boats this week and today we started assembling the boats, and here they are.




Here is a comparison shot of the two boats. The boats are comfy rides. Woody and I are super comfortable in the two different sizes.



This is the new hip pad system that is going into the whitewater boats now.
Up and Down adjustment. Forward and Back adjustment. In and Out, and a tilt if you want, sorry they aren't heated.



Here is a link to more photos, videos, and words and stats about the CRs.
Click Here
Later
Shane

Deck designs & exceeded bandwidth

Image troubles! In my previous post I linked to images hosted on my geocities.com site, which allows only 4mb of traffic per hour. That was promptly exceeded. (I think I'll be moving my web site soon.) So now I'll load those images directly to Blogger. The second set of photos were created using the kayak design tool found on the Action Fish Kayaks web site.

CR Molds are in the Factory!

I love the smell of new alluminum. The new Cross River molds showed up at the factory the other day and I have been working on getting them ready for production. Its always awesome to see the new molds because they are so shiny and new. The 125 and the 250 are both up now. It usually takes a couple weeks to get the molds all broken in and running smoothly. Just like a good pair of shoes. Thats why we aren't promising to ship any boats until Feb. 1st.



If you haven't seen how boats are made you should look at these video links.
How Kayaks are Molded
How Kayaks are Built #1
How Kayaks are Built #2

Lots of folks have been asking about the CRs and when they were coming so I figured I would show you what is going on. I will try to post pictures of the first outfitted boat on Friday.
Later
Shane