Adding the deck

I am building a kayak, not a canoe. So the deck has to go on now. Trying to save on PVC I decided to use two 2.5 meter pieces for the deck. They will be joined just in front of the cockpit:
A first look of the boat with the yellow cover:

Trimming the deck requires some courage. It is a lot of material, so you do not want to make a mess of it. Using lots of tape it starts to look like a real kayak now:
Leaving a few mm open the edge of the deck is lined with tape. The tape is used to mask the gluing area and to avoid runoffs of the glue:
And in detail:

After this the glue is applied and the deck is taped in place with a LOT of tape. With less tape is is difficult to avoid wrinkles.
Working from the middle to the ends the heat gun is used to bond hull and deck together. Be carefull to minimise the amount of wrinkles at the hull-deck joint. The result:
And in detail:
Now the ends are still wide open. First I will close them crudely, afterwards they will get a proper and nice cover. As is is difficult to apply pressure when bonding without a frame or sponson, I filled the ends with foam or the like. The stern:
And the bow:

Now I close the ends as good as I can do it, but is is difficult to make them look nice. Some small cuts are required tro avoid big wrinkles. After this the stern looks like this:
Again the stern:
And the bow:
I agree, it does not look to well. But come back for next blog, and you will be surprised with the final result.

Getting the hull in shape

With the hull on the table and the sponsons inserted the moment has come to shape the hull. Inflating the sponsons and adding tape quickly brings the shape. Make sure you have the ends clamped really well, otherwise the keel tube jumps out of the ends.

The clamped bow:

Here the small modellers clamp is in place. I made the hull a bit short, so I have not a lot of material left. Next time a bit longer would be better.

With the tape in place the hull looks nice:

And from the other side:

Due to the single piece hull I ended up with some severe wrinkles:

There is just to much material at the deck line, and it goes into three big wrinkles on both sides of the hull. Here the sewn sleeves approach is a disadvantage. The hull already is glued to the sleeves, so I can not just cut the hull and patch it as Tom does on his PVC sleeve version. I have to work loose the sleeve from the skin at the position of the wrinkles to be able to cut the skin. Luckily this goes rather well with enough heat from the heatgun:

After cutting I first glue the skin back in place, then patch the area.
With patch waiting:

And the result:

Next the paper tape has to be replaced by PVC strips. Originally I wanted to go without this step and just use the tape (paper or duct tape) to keep the hull in shape. Regretfully none of the tape I tried could hold the load for an hour or more. As I did not want to have a hull loosing shape while mounting the deck I resorted to the tried PVC strips.

Cutting the strips to length:

The hull with the strips waiting to be glued:

And here one of the strips at its final position:

After this the hull is ready for the deck.

Blog delay

The blog has a a lot of delay, and the boat a little. I planned to have the boat ready for my trip to Australia in june, but despite the effort it was not to be. I spend the time I had on the boat, so the blog is way behind now. Actually, the boat is ready and will be launched wednesday 21 juli!

Next days I will try to get rid of the difference between the blog and the boat.

The clamps for the frame and the frame tubes

They have been made earlier, but not documented yet: the HDPE clamps for the cross braces.
When my wife went to the Hanos to get food for her cooking business I asked her to pick up a HDPE cutting board. Nice colour, isn't it?
The stuff is really easy to work on. Use a reciprocal saw to cut it, and drilling really is easy.
I could not get a 19 mm drill, and I did not want to spend big money. So I made the crossbraces out of 22 mm sleeve tubing. 22 mm speed drills (those flat drills for wood) are easy to obtain, and work well. The final deburing is done manually with a sharp knive, and the result is:


I also made the side tubes for the frame, a quick and easy job.
These are the times that I really love to have a lathe and a milling machine.

It looks like a boat, almost

With bow and stern shaped it is time to turn the hull over . So I took it of the skinning frame and put it on the table.
I contrast to the pictures by Tom my hull does not keep shape without the sponsoons inflated. Another problem is that I made the hull material slightly on the short side, so I tried to use clamps at the bow and stern tubes. These do not hold, so the bow and stern tube slide out of the hull. I finally solved this by using small screw clamps.
The loss of shape probably is due to the fact that I use the sewn sleeve method. The hull now essentially is a flat piece of PVC. With PVC sleeves the sleeves are more rigid and keep the hull in shape. Next step is putting in the sponsons. I use masking tape to tape the sponson to a side stringer.

And then I fold the sponson and insert it into the sleeve:

After some fiddling all sponsons are at the correct locations.
And this is a horrible image of what it looks like with the sponsons inflated and the hull taped.
Taping is another subject of importance. I tried two brands of duct tape, two types of masking tape and packing tape to keep the hull in shape. I wanted to avoid glueing straps over the hull.
To no avail: ALL tape lost its bond with the hull after some time, exept the packing tape. Instead, the packing tape just broke, and left a horrible glue residue.
In the end I used so brandless masking tape (P&P, says the roll) that has the best bond without leaving much residue. But the glued strips are required.

Fitting the skin

The skin is put onto the skinning frame, ready to finish bow and stern.

Using clamps the skin near the ends is clamped to the gunwhales to have it tightly on the frame. The skin is marked with masking tape for a proper overlap just around the frame tube and cut to identical lines on both sides of the hull.

Some temporary pieces of tape hold the PVC in place to mask the area to be glued.

After application of glue the skin again is taped in place, and heat and pressure are applied to bond the PVC. It really helps to have the PVC properly taped at the correct location before trying to achieve a bond.

The area near the bend is a bit difficult and needs some smal cuts. These will be covered with a small patch later.
The final result:

glueing bananas on the skin

The sponson sleeves now are ready to be glued onto the skin. Regretfully, no photographs of this building phase.
I put a double layer of Helaplast on the bananas and the skin, using masking tape to mark the area to glue and to allign the bananas.
I used an iron to heat the sleeves and put pressure at the same time. This works quite well for flat surfaces.

The sponsoon sleeves, part two, and the pockets

After the banana shaped PVC I have to make the nylon parts. I make the nylon straight in stead of curved, the flexibility will allow the nylon to follow the curves.
Using permanent marker I set the distances between the lines I have to draw. I use a long and straight piece of wood as a ruler. It does not matter if it is slightly curved as long as you use the same part of the ruler for all lines. Main advantage of making straight nylon parts is that it is much less work when drawing.
I draw lines to cut the nylon, and lines to sew on. Make sure you draw the lines clearly so that they shine through the fabric, it is very practical when you are able to see the lines on both sides of the fabric.
The nylon I used was shorter than the sleeves, so I had to join two pieces:

After that I use pins to fix the nylon on the PVC. Start out with the two central lines, and after that the edges. When you start with the edges you have a problem with the centrelines: you wil not be able to check underneath the fabric if it is exactly in position. When pinning the edges, work from the middle towards the ends. Here the centreline and one edge are pinned.
I sew everything on my old and battered Vendomatic machine. My mother gave it to me years ago when she bought a shiny new one. But actually, for heavy type of work without fancy stitches this one is much better. It is very heavy, but cast iron stays forever. It is as old as I am (41), but still going strong.

The fabric I use is 64 gr/m2 Ripstop nylon for tents from ESVO, and the yarn is their polyester-cotton tent yarn. If you can get it, use a light colour for the nylon as it is easier to see the markes lines. Make sure you have sufficient yarn, I used a complete 125 meter bobbin only for he sleeves.

Sewing the sleeves done, it is now time to make the pockets for the ends of the side stringers. On the nylon the pockets can not be glued on, so I thought of a different solution.
First I stitch on an oversized rectangular piece of PVC near the end of the sleeves.
Then I cut this pattern:
Here the glue is on already, that causes the edges to come up. Now I put a piece of aluminium of 20 mm diameter on the PVC. I fold the lower flap over the aluminium, then two of the three little pieces around the end, then the big upper flap down and finally the last two small pieces. When you do this correctly you end up with this:
And seen from the backside:
No photograph of the completes sleeves yet, "Card full" said the camera.....

I put pockets on both bow and stern ends of the sleeves. Doing this I hope I can go without the straps that Tom uses on his boats. The staps are difficult to make as they have to be sewn onto the nylon.

The gluing of the pockets was the first real glueing I did. Before that I made a few test pieces. I use Helaplast glue, as I could not get HH-66 in the Netherlands. I tried various amounts of thinning and found out that with thinning the bond is better, probably because the layer of glue is thinner.
On flat surfaces it works very well to use a clothes iron in stead of a heat gun. The iron allows you to apply heat and pressure at the same moment.

The sponsoon sleeves, part one

I decided to use the new method of making sponsoon sleeves that Tom has developed for his new double. With this method the sleeves are for 1/3 made out of PVC, and for 2/3 out of ripstop nylon.
The method is lighter and might result in less wrinkles. Tom is ethousiastic about it, but his wife Rita does the sewing. As I am quite handy with the sewing machine I decided to give it a try.

Today I started out making the banana-shaped PVC parts for the sleeves. Here I use a different PVC, a quite supple grey version of about 500 gr/m2. Main advantage above the black stuff is that it is easy to mark. For sewing I need proper and clear lines to make the sleeves exactly the right dimensions.

The marked skin is put on table with the grey stuff on top of it. I tape both skin and grey PVC to the table to prevent any movement.
Then I carelfully roll back the grey PVC and put small marks at the locations of the tape markings on the skin. This way I copy both gunwhale and chine lines onto the grey PVC.

I add markings for the cutting and sewing lines.
Again the kids help, this time to connect the small marks with long black lines. Both want to help, and that usually results in conflicts or disaster. So I let them help in turns, and let the other one take photographs. Lots of them...


After cutting the banana looks like this:

A really nice fit.
Luckily the banashape proves to fit both left and right on the skin (or should I say port and star?). So I can use the first one as a template for the second one.
Some more drawing and cutting yield two nice antisymmetric sleeve bananas:


Ready for sewing. But first I have to make the nylon parts.