Steam Bending and Gap Filling

Things have been pretty slow going around here recently but I have gotten a few things done.

1. I rough sanded the deck.
   
2. Last week I cut out the cockpit hole, so the boat, again, has a hole in it. This is as far as I'll take the cockpit until after the deck has been glassed.
   
3. I cut another hole in the kayak, this one is a circle of about 4" or so in diameter and is located just fore of the cockpit and was cut to accept a carved feature I made for insertion in the deck (more on this in a subsequent post).
4. I finished the carved feature mentioned above and after a great deal of mucking about with it, inserted the carved piece with walnut center into the kayak deck and glued it in place.
5. More sanding on the deck.
6. I made a fairing board for sanding by attaching handles to a piece of 1/8" hardboard sized to accommodate a layed out sanding belt (from a belt sander). This works well, I should've done it sooner.
7. I built a plywood box for steam bending the walnut strips which are to become the external stems (bow & stern).
   
8. I screwed around with an old electric kettle to get it to work properly for the steam box. First I had to bypass the thermostat so that it would continue to boil for the necessary time. Second, I had to come up with a pipe set-up in order to carry the steam into the box. It seemed that the steam would have rather gone anywhere other than into the box (no, the box was not sealed too tightly) prefer to escape at the several weak points in my system. The final set-up used a PVC pipe (1 1/2"?), duct taped to the kettle with a second piece of pipe (2"?) slipped over top and a third piece (1 1/2"? again) which fit inside the larger piece, giving a telescoping arrangement. The pipes were sealed with duct tape, and sealed to the box with duct tape. Too bad duct tape sucks with respect to resisting steam. Oh well, it worked long enough to hold in the steam for 20 minutes or so at a time.
   
9. I made forms to replicate the shape of the stems on which to bend the steamed walnut stems and hold them while they dried.
10. I steamed the walnut, bent it around the forms, and clamped it in place for it to dry overnight.
    
11. I mixed up and applied some thickened epoxy to fill the gaps on the deck, using a light yellow mixture as shown in an earlier post for the alaskan yellow cedar section of the deck, and a brownish mixture for the western red cedar section of the deck.
    
12. I learned that if you mix up ~2 ounces of epoxy (1 pump resin + 1 pump hardener) and let it sit in front of the heater for a couple of minutes so that it becomes warm to reduce the viscosity, it will get smoking hot (very literally) when it begins to "kick". It seemed the perfect consistency when I started to use it to coat my carving (I wanted to ensure it would flow into all the nooks without trapping air) but I was really surprised how quickly the epoxy went from a thin liquid to semi-solid. Although I managed to get the carving mostly coated before the resin became unusable, it was only barely and I didn't fill all the valleys as I planned (no problem, I'll get it on the next go around).
    

The next few steps will be to scrape/sand off the excess epoxy putty, sand things smooth again, glue the stems in place, shape the stems, fill gaps on the hull. At that point, I think I should be ready for glassing.

Veritas� Pouchless Tool Belt - Lee Valley Tools

Since my block blane, chisel, scraper or saw are invariable on the other side of the strongback and boat, I thought the new Veritas "Pouchless Tool Belt" from Lee Valley Tools was a great idea. I'm gonna order one as soon as I can get my credit card remagnetized.

Pat Just Got Back From N.Z. and Uganda

Pat left the great white north of the Ottawa River which is still locked in somewhat with ice so that he could thaw out his bones on the west coast of New Zealand and the White Nile of Uganda. New Zealand is such an awesome place to go because of so much good paddling and the surroundings are completely surreal. Lots of crystal blue, green, glacier water. Big Glaciers with crumbling faces just off the road and miles of beach with good breaks as well. Pat and Ben Brown threw some photos my way of thier time in N.Z. as well as Africa.







You have all seen shots from the Nile in Africa by now but Ben shooting these sweet shots and Pat are an amazing combo. Thanks to Ben Brown for the photos to use and Pat for ripping the way he does.



Pat is doing some really cool backwards moves out of a spin right now. I know there are cool names for this but I am less concerned with the names and more psyched to see the play moves constantly moving forward, or backwards as it would be.





Going Large.



This is the craziest looking drop. It just isn't right. It looks just horrendous but pretty much everyone seems to go through. Sometimes with big downtime, sometimes swimming but everyone seems to go through.



Thanks Pat and Ben for the awesome shots.
Shane

Cockpit recess stripped

Well I finally got a bit of time to do some more work on the boat this weekend. I finished stripping the recessed cockpit area. Short strips were glued in place with the Lee Valley 2002 GF wood glue that I've used for most of the boat, but dabs of hot glue were used on the inner end of each piece to hold it in place so that I didn't have to wait for the glue to dry before moving on to the next series of strips. Dabs of hot glue were used here and there in other places too to ensure that all the short strips stayed where they were put. The whole recess took an ridiculous amount of time for something so simple. Next time I think I would seriously consider laying in a piece of thin, flexible plywood instead.

Stern to bow shot:

Bow to stern shot:
Side profile:The above photo shows how the recessed area lowers the final cockpit position, especially on the rear deck.

Finally, a frankensteinian panorama:
That's it the deck is practically finished right??....... (stay tuned to see what's in store next)

p.s. If anyone can tell me how to quickly do a passable job of adjusting the colours in a digital photo to have things look a little bit realistic, I'm all ears. I play with the colour balance, gamma, tone, brightness, contrast and that thing with the curve that does wicked things to a photo, with limited success at best. I've got all the tools, I know how to turn them on, but I don't properly understand what they do or when to use them. Most of my shop pictures turn out too orange maybe due to the colour of the wood and a light source with a warm tone as seen by the camera.

What some folks do to their boats

Recently on the kayak building bulletin board, there was a discussion regarding the perceived fragility of the fiberglass composite boats know as "strippers" or cedar-strip canoes & kayaks. One of the folks to relate their experiences was Bjorn Thomasson, who replied:
"A stripper is a delicate thing! Look what happened to my Nomad, just for a simple somersault backwards in 13 ft breaking sea and hitting the rocky bottom with the stern! Disappointing..."
The post was followed by a picture of his broken kayak with the rear 2 feet sheared right off. In case you didn't notice, Bjorn was speaking very much tongue in cheek in his answer. Bjorn has also provided the story (Swedish with English translation) behind the "incident" and pictures of the broken kayak and the ensuing repairs. It's worth a look if only for the dramatic pictures. It also shows another advantage of wood boats - their ability to be repaired. Simply put, if you can build it, you can fix it.

Another response in the same discussion was posted by "Ken C":
"I keep my strip kayak hanging from webbing loops in the garage ... one day, I was bringing it down and in a momentary lapse of coordination, I lost control of the boat ... it came crashing down onto the corner of my jointer table (rock-solid cast-iron surface with lotsa angular corners, if you haven't seen one), and then bounced down onto the bare concrete floor ...
"oh, darn" says I ...
I took a minute to calm down and jump-start my heart again, before inspecting the damage ... the neighbors must have been wondering what the commotion was all about ... I was sure I'd be patching a gaping wound, but when I finally got up the nerve to go and look, I couldn't even find a mark ... no dent, no scratch, no glass showing ...... nothing.
I no longer walk on eggshells - these glass/wood/glass panels are TOUGH. "
Not as dramatic as Bjorn's testing efforts but perhaps relates closely to something I'm likely to encounter (not often we see 13' breaking seas on the South Saskatchewan River or at Lakeview Pond).

Thoughts about Daniel.

I paddled down the Green with Daniel and a big posse of people the other day. It was his birthday.
It seemed like most of the Asheville paddling crowd was there. It was a lot like any day on the river with that crew.
Meeting at the takeout, walking the trail, chatting, talking shit, and getting psyched for another run, fast lines,
and a good adrenaline pump at Gorilla. Daniel and few others caught a rediculous eddie 5 feet above the notch.
Other than that it was a fairly normal Green run. But now its totally different and things keep coming back to me
from that day and they have so much more significance now. I remember grinning with him in the parking lot over something funny that happened. He gave Whitney advice on how to run Boof, and she slicked it.
I had a super smooth run through Go Left and I remember looking back upstream at the rapid that day and remembering that Daniel had gotten me off the couch a few years before and had really helped me push myself to get paddling hard again.
I always love catching the eddie after the notch at Gorilla because it is one of the coolest eddies in the world. Just look around. At the take out we shared a 3.2 beer that had been rolling around in Johns van since Salt Lake City and laughed about the stupid eddie they caught, Tommy being a dad, extreme fishing, and how many times Jason thought he could walk back up and run Gorilla in one day.

Then I got a phone call and the river will never be the same.

In the days since that phone call I have paddled the river.
It's like paddling through an album of thoughts, memories, and emotions.
What makes any river powerful for me are the adventures that are shared there.
I don't feel something from the river. I feel something from the people, experiences, conversations, and lines that build up my feeling of what that river is all about.

My first trip over Gorilla after Daniel died was intense.
Someone put a rock cairn at the notch over looking the drop.
It was powerful.

The soundtrack of the notch, gorilla, and the slides are full of Danielisms.
"Yeeeeeeaaaaaauuuuuuuuhhhhhh"
"Yeah Dawg"
"Yeah he slicked that shit"
"Time to Run the Shit"
"Ride the Lighting"
It just rolls around in my head.
Not a bad soundtrack.

I put together some clips from that day paddling with folks on Friday. Daniel did so many amazing things but what I remember are days out on the Green having a good time with he and the rest of the gang. These shots are things that happened and thoughts of experiences I had with D on the river.
Video Thoughts of Daniel, Click This

Google Mars

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