Tony Olsen on Clamps

Tony Olsen's Kayak Bytes - Hatch flanges: I found an interesting statement on Tony Olsen's blog: "You can never have too many clamps no matter what your wife says." See Dear, Tony says so too! Tony is building a "modified Great Auk". Previously, Tony also built this very nice Guillemot.

Tony must be right; just to see what happened when I Googled the phrase "never have too many clamps" and got 2.47 Million hits! Add "kayak" to the search phrase and you get this, this, this (another Guillemot), this (that's an intersting one, incuding a very unusual photograph of the builder at work), this, this, and many more. That actually turned out to be a very interesting exercise since I found a whole bunch of kayak building web sites I'd never seen before.

The New LL Hip Pads

We are really excited about the new hip pad system. We have been working on it for quite a while trying to make it simple and bomber. We didn't want it to be some gimicky system. There are no inflatable bladders, no neoprene or elastic sleeves that slip around, just a couple screws and some velcro. We wanted something that was very durable, easy to use, and extremely adjustable.

All you need is the same screwdriver you use to adjust the seats and thighbraces in our boats to loosen up the pads, release the velcro on top of the pad, and then you are ready to adjust up and down, forward and back, or twist so that you can get a super custom fit.

If you need to tighten the fit, or make the hip pads bigger, you can slip shims in behind the hip pads by just loosening the hip pad a little, you don't need to take the screws all the way out, and slip more shims in behind the the pad.

I like to get in the boat and make sure the pads feel right. Once I have them positioned how I want them I mark the spot with a marker. That way once I jump out of the boat I can make sure that I have them in the right place. Then just tighten down the screws and pull the velcro into place. I think at that point you will be hard pressed to find a more adjustable, simple, and durable set of hip pads in the industry.


Here is a link to the video of how they work.
Click Here
Shane

Liquidlogic's New Foot Foam

Here is the new foot foam set up that will be coming in all the boats that don't have a bulk head.

The foot foam blocks will come in a bag in your boat and the "Cone of Comfort" will come in place in the bow of your boat.
What I like to do is jump in the boat with only the front foam piece in place in the foot cone. Then I add foam pieces as I need them. Obviously someone shorter might start with a couple of the extra pieces in place.

Once I have the number of foam shims I need to make a good tight fit I like to glue them all together. That makes them much more solid and helps keep them in the boat. The other thing that I do is custom shape the foam so that it fits exactly the way I want it to. A lot of people like to trim out a place for their big toe. Anyway you get the idea.

When you put it all back in the boat I like to put the bow wall on top of the front edge of the cone of comfort. That helps keep it in place and makes getting in the boat smooth.

Here is the link to the video.
How to Use the Foot Foam Video, Click This!
Hope this helps
Shane

Big Boatin' The Noli

We hadn't done a Big Boat session in a while so Woody and I decided to make a trip up to the Noli and bring along some newbie long boat paddlers. Whitney has paddled a Pisgah once before, but Yonton hadn't done the big boat thing before. We knew he would like it but pretty foreign to him.

We all loaded up in Woody's reliable Buick LeSabre. Four paddlers four Pisgahs. The one thing we remembered a little late was the fact that when you paddle boats that are that long you actually do need a bow line. We drove up I-26 with the middle boats pointing more and more towards the sky. We tried retying but that didn't help. We looked like the guy with the mattress on his roof trying to hold it on with our hands.

Whitney, Woody, and I have all been paddling long enough that we actually paddled whitewater boats that were nearly this long, but Yonton doesn't have that much experience in the long boats. So we weren't sure how that was going to go. We gave him a boat with a rudder figuring if things went really bad he could drop the rudder and guide himself home.

It was a beautiful day out there. January 28th and it was 60 degrees. The water was cold as hell but still and awesome day.
Here is the video. Its a 15mb video so it may take a minute to load.
Big Boatin' the Noli Video Link, Click This
I will be posting video of the new Foot System and Adjustable Hip Pads later this week.
Shane

Planning Ahead

I need to start thinking about how much epoxy and fiberglass to get. The recommended quantity of epoxy according to Nick's book is 1.1 gallons. Other places I've seen recommend getting 2 gallons of epoxy and I will probably do this, hoping I don't actually use much of that second gallon (not only is it very expensive, it's also heavy). It would be kinda crappy to run out at a critical point and I won't have the option of running down the street to Churchill Hardware to pick up some more, so I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and get the larger quantity. To get 1 gallon plus 1 litre would still be cutting it too close, and the larger volume is a better value. Plus, by all accounts, first time builders use too much epoxy. I'll be using the West Systems 105 resin with the 207 hardener.

The second thing I need to figure out the quantity of is the glass cloth. It comes in a 60" width and I can lay it at an angle to get the best economy out of the cloth. I did some cutting and pasting to come up with the following diagram to help me decide how much cloth I need: The above layout uses 1 layer on the inside and one on the outside with an extra layer on the bottom. The cutoffs should give me enough to work with for the other areas that need to be glassed. By my figuring, the above layout tells me that I need to get ~17 yards. I'll probably just round it up to 20 yards to make certain there is enough and keep the extra (assuming there is much extra) to go along with the extra epoxy so that I have a head start on the next boat! (Or all the other little things that one can build out of epoxy & fiberglass, such as a side view mirror for the car after my wife drops another boat on it.)

The Lee Valley/Canada Post Problem

The Lee Valley/Canada Post Problem

Some interesting reading regarding Lee Valley versus Canada Post.

Deck Half Done

I got nearly 4 hours of work done last night so I am now about half done stripping the deck.
Please excuse the frankensteinian cut & paste panorama.