Naiadhome

A video of some hares in a field in Dorset.

Hares running around

Slow but steady progress recently. Glassing the hull and deck insides, fitting maroske fittings for the rigging, building the skeg box, stripping some panels for the bulkheads, and other fiddly bits all take a lot longer than initial estimates. Oh, and time to paddle as well!

Heres a picture from the bow of the glassed deck with 3 fill coats.

Now its time to glass the hull interior. I decided to get a bit fancy in this section by using some carbon/Kevlar composite cloth. Why? well I think it looks cool, I would only need one layer of cloth here because of the strength of the carbon/Kevlar construction, I wanted to try something different, and to be honest it hides the less than perfect beveling on some of the strips in the bottom of the hull which would look a bit rough if I tried to fill them. This is 165gms or just over 4oz so no real weight penalty either.

It was harder to wet out than standard cloth, but the specs say that the resin to cloth ratio should be 1:1 so I measured enough epoxy to wet out and apply a single fill coat. It does change colour slightly by getting a bit darker when wet and a strong low level light helps as well.

Next up was to cut some holes in the boat for the skeg. I'm using the design from Nick Schade which I used on the Petrel Play. Its fairly easy to build the skeg housing which goes into a slot near the stern from standard ply well glassed inside and out.

The box is built with all four sides in place, and then after glassing into the hull the bottom is sliced off. The second hole is for the skeg control. In this case I 3D printed the case and this is the hole where it will live. Things start to get a bit fragile here until its all put together. You can see the control box in the bottom of the hull with the stainless cable guides.

I also added some maroske fittings I 3D printed. I like these as it means no deck level fitting to get caught on when re-entering the boat and they are almost indestructible. In this build I decided to separate the deck lines from the bungees to simplify rigging later so there are 26 fittings in total.

Here you can also see the back bevel I'm putting on the deck to ensure a tight clean join. Rob helpfully suggested that over beveling would help achieve a tight fit.

Ok, the slow time consuming detail work is now done at least for now. Time to glue the top to the bottom. Yards of reinforced packing tape and gently easing the two halves together it starts to look like a boat.

Not perfect, but I'm pretty happy with this join.

Time to cut the hatches out so I can get inside to apply the tape and glue. Nice big hatches on this boat. On my Petrel Play I have one small hatch which is fine for lunch, but a struggle to get anything like a dry bag in.

The taping took time to try and get the tape wetted out without too many bubbles and without great pools of resin lurking in the join, but I got there in the end. Very happy that after the taping there was almost no leakage of epoxy to the outside of the seam, so I'm pretty certain this is a really good fit, worth the 2-3 hours fussing with the bevels.

The inside isn't pretty with rather too many unwanted drips and other imperfections, but the top and bottom are now one. This also shows the skeg box in place in the stern.

This is the hull and deck after taping and all the packing tape removed.

There is a piece of glass missing from the front of the deck right now as it started to show signs of stress marks as I forced the deck into shape at this point, so I used a heat gun to soften it and take it off so I can get a clear coat here, probably as part of the outer seaming which will happen fairly soon. I had a similar problem at the stern so that also has a small area removed.

I'm also not happy with the tail deck as it curled up after glassing and forcing it to fit is going to damage something, so I'll be re-doing that as well.

Next up is the out seam, the hatch supports and the coaming.

The build has slowed recently, but some progress has been made. The deck was sanded some more with the ROS and the long board using 80 then 120 and finally 240 grit. Super smooth surface and only a few gaps opened up. Here I again used the glue/sand method and they mostly disappeared. The next step was to cut out the cockpit opening. I didn't follow Rob Mack's suggestion of laminating the cockpit as I didn't want to have to try and source thin pieces of wood and I don't really have the space to build the laminating frame. I intend to use vertical strips for the riser and some ash for the lip as I did on my Petrel Play. I chose a cutout the same size as my PP so I can use the same spray skirt and I find the size a good fit. So I drew up a paper template and used that to cut the opening. Rob's instructions show a dropped front to the opening which I think looks nice and probably stops some water from splashing up when the boat hits a wave. The deck is pretty flimsy at this point and care needs to be taken not to crack or break things.

I also stripped the aft deck which is on a different plane to the main deck, and I wanted to continue the main deck pattern to the very end.

To try and get the best finish I put a thin seal coat on which brings out the colours.

Here you can also see the gap between the dropped deck and the main deck with a thin fillet.

And finally time to glass the deck. Here I decided to use 4oz S-glass. It has a much finer weave and is harder to wet out than twill used on the hull, but it turned out fine, even if the weave is slightly more discernible at close quarters.

Next steps and some boring bits, building the skeg, a couple of strip planks for the bulkheads and cleaning, sanding and glassing the inside of the deck. Part 6

After glassing the hull and applying three thin fill coats of epoxy I removed the hull with the forms still attached from the strong back and suspended this in a couple of webbing slings.

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Removing the supports and the forms was followed by some cleanup of the hull interior using scrapers. Here's the bow section the right way up now. I haven't done any cleanup of the hull exterior yet other than remove some of the more egregious drips. I'll sand the hull and deck once they have been joined as per Rob's suggestions.

First pass cleanup of the hull, with pencil marks where the formers go.

After cleaning up the forms go back into the hull at the marked positions. They are secured with small dabs of hot glue.

For the deck design I decided to have a dark edge to the deck with some highlights. I originally planned some fancy curves using some of the poplar strips, but that's a hard wood to bend, and after a couple of experiments I found the work needed to trim the remaining strips to fit narrow angles just too time consuming and I realised that getting the boat ready to use this summer trumps obsessing over fancy detailing.

So I reverted to a more traditional design with a central king plank of poplar then I'll be filling the rest with darker WRC strips. Here's the progress so far.

Next steps are to complete the deck, then the tail section deck. The design notes originally suggested that the bow deck should be built as a separate part, but its quite possible to do the bow deck and main deck together which is much faster and I think adds a bit more strength to the front of the boat as well.

After that false start the deck went on fairly quickly. I didn't have enough strips of a single colour to do the deck so I decided to have some bands of contrasting colours. Heres a view from the stern.

and the rear and front decking nearly finished.

and finally the decking complete.

On the deck I used a technique from Rob Macks that Nick Schade also shows to use hot glue to keep the edges of the strips aligned while the wood glue sets. This is a lot quicker than taping the edges and seems to have worked quite well. I used a couple of sharp scrapers to cut the straps off and then sanded to deck with 60 grit using my ROS.

I'm really pleased with the strip joints and the general level of the hull.

Next steps part 5

I finally got my long board sander from Ebay. It looks similar the Mirka one but at a fraction of the price, so lets see how it holds up. It hooks up to my shop vac and I ordered it with some 80 grit and 120 grit long sanding sheets with pre-punched holes, it works a treat and keeps the dust down.

So my sanding schedule was:

Starting with 60 grit on my ROS to knock down the high spots, mainly where the strip edges formed ridges, followed by 80 grit with the ROS. Then 80 grit with the long board followed by 120 with the ROS and 120 with the long board. This didn't take long as the hull was pretty smooth and fair. Finally I used some 240 in the ROS to get a really smooth finish.

We finally had some dry spring weather today and I managed to get the boat out of the workshop for a good look.

With the warmer weather I decided to start the hull glassing. Although its in the low teens now, its still not really warm enough for the epoxy, so to keep it warm in storage and before use I built a plywood cabinet to keep it around 25C. It is insulated with an old foam camping mat and some foil designed to go behind wall mounted radiators. Its heated using a 20W reptile heater and an STC1000 temperature controller. A bit rough and ready but it works fine.

I'm using MAS Low Viscosity resin with a slow hardener.

As per Rob Mack's recommendations I started with a thin seal coat rolled on. I'm using the WEST yellow rollers, cut in half, and while they roll a good coating, they do have a tendency to de-laminate with the foam coming off after about half the hull is done. Expensive and disappointing! This is after the seal coat for which I mixed 160g (6oz) then (80g) 3oz of resin, though not all of it was finally used.

Next day... Glassing time!. I'm keen to keep the weight down while still having a strong kayak. I'm using a combination of e-glass and s-glass. On the outer skins I'm using 6oz E-glass twill to try and get the clearest layup. On the inside I'm going to use 4oz s-glass, which apparently has a similar strength to 6oz E-glass, but does not wet out as clearly, though it'll be interesting to see the difference.

Here's the hull with the first layup of 6oz e-glass. This first layup used about 400g (10oz) and after squeegeeing there was about 60g (2oz) waste.

Part 4 decking the hull

I've been spending some time finishing the hull. Here are some pictures of progress.

Getting close to the final strips. I've been using some ideas from Rob macks where I hot glue small strips across the joints to make sure the thin strips stay aligned between the forms.

This side of the hull all finished up. The final strips were really thin and I ended up doing it a couple of times.

I used a variety of scrapers to get rid of glue, some of the unevenness and then sanded using 60 grit on my new DeWalt random orbital sander. Here I've wetted the surface to raise the grain and to get a first look at how the colours have worked out.

As usual there are some small gaps that appear after sanding where I'd over beveled, so I've used an idea from Howard Spira on the CLC forum where he masks the gap, applies some PVA glue, lets it set for a while, then after removing the tape sands across the gap which fills with the sanding dust. Very effective as seen here. First one of the gaps.

Taped and some PVA glue applied with a syringe

and after sanding, almost invisible.

Now I'm waiting for a long board sander with a dust extraction feature and some long sanding sheets.

Sanding details and start of the glass layup in Part 3

Woes with an MD2010 Posted on May 1, 2012 by admin

Recently my trusty MD2010 let me down. The engine is 10 years old now, but like many sailing boat engines little used. It gets an outing most weeks from the marina to the race start line and back again, and usually at weekends it gets an hour or so of use. This spring after the yearly haul out and anti-foul the boat went back in, but nothing more was done other than check the engine started. On the first Tuesday night race in April the engine started, but when asked to do some real work failed to increase from a tick-over. The secondary filter was changed but no joy, so we missed that weeks racing. Subsequently I changed the primary filter, cleaned some gunge out of the tank, filled the tank, added some bug treatment, but the engine now failed even to start properly.

I posted a question on the ybw forum (http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=311589 and had a few helpful suggestions.

Reluctantly I called in the professionals (Mike Wills of Cobbs Quay) who found that the injectors were hosing (I guess they were not pressurising properly) and the exhaust was coked up. After a replacement set of injectors and a good clean of the exhaust elbow, the engine now seems ok. Looking forward to my first race of the season tonight!

This blog describes how I am building a baidarka style kayak from Rob Macks at Laughing Loon kayaks.

I've already built two other kayaks - a Wood Duck 12 hybrid from CLC and a Petrel Play strip kayak from Guillemot Kayaks.

You can find the Wood Duck build log here Wood Duck at Fyne Boats "Petrel Play at Fyne Boats" and the Petrel Play

I've been paddling the petrel play for a couple of years and find its a great boat in all sorts of conditions. But, I've been bitten by the boat building bug and I've been thinking about another boat. What am I looking for? Well, slightly longer for speed, although the Petrel Play is fine for normal cruising at 3kts or so, as others have commented on the CLC forum I find I start to get left behind the longer boats if they step on it. Maybe something that tracks better for longer paddles. The Petrel Play is quite easy to turn, and although it has a skeg, it can sometimes be tiring on a windy day to stay on track. It will have to be wood of course, and to make it interesting I plan on using thinner strips without cove and bead. I'm also going to try and build it lighter than my Petrel Play which comes in at 18kg, aiming for 12kg.

I could of course just get another greenland style boat - there are a lot of very good designs out there, but something different also piqued my interest. I came across the baidarka designs from Rob Macks of LaughingLoon kayaks Laughing Loon and the shooting star caught my eye which is 16'6", but as I only have a standard garage and can just about fit a 16 foot kayak in there, Rob suggested a Dark Star which has an overall design length of 15' 6".

The plans were ordered from Rob and they arrived a week or so later from the US together with the instruction book, and some designs for wood paddles I also ordered at the same time. The plans come on two A1 sheets and some A3 sheets for the smaller parts. As per the conditions printed on the sheets I had some copies made so I could cut out the templates for use when tracing the forms.

The wood was bought from a supplier in Hastings in Sussex in the UK, but he is sadly no longer in business. The design calls for 3/16" western red cedar and I also got some tulip wood for accents. The strips don't have cove and bead. There was a nice selection of colours in the wood, so my plan is to have a mainly lighter colour hull with some very light accents and some darker strips around the waterline. The deck will be mainly darker wood with some very dark and light accents. There is enough wood so that most of it will be full length strips, though I will scarf some sections to cut down waste.

Rob's suggested order of construction is to build the tricky bow and stern sections first. These are based on the skin on frame boats that inspired this design. The bow is made of some hardwood lamination and a carved wood block.

Here I've glued the shaped laminations and I'm adding a thin accent strip.

For the stern section, first the stern forms are cut out and glued together to make the mold for the stern.

. Then the stern strips are bent using a heat gun and attached to the forms with hot glue. Lots of clamps needed here.

Unlike the internal strong back used on the Petrel Play, Rob Mack's designs use an external strong back, so the first task was to assemble this strong back from 12mm plywood. I did use the internal strong back from the Petrel Play build as an internal beam for the new strong back. I had B&Q cut the full sheet of plywood for me as they can produce really straight cuts and accurate measuring.

The forms were cut from 12mm plywood. Setting these up with the brackets, getting them level, measured and adjusted and then getting some left over strips to check for fairness took a long time, but as Rob and others say, this is an important step to make sure the hull and deck are fair.

I also built a table to work on and attached some wheels so I could move it around the garage. I'm working in a standard garage and I can fit the 16' boat length with enough room to get round one end, so wheels make it much easier to move around, and get it outside when I need to get at other stuff in the garage.

Here I've attached the bow and stern forms and started adding strips.

I used hot glue to attach the strips to the forms and there are areas when I've used additional little scraps hot glued to make sure that the edges are tight against each other. All bevels are hand planed with my little block plane, this only takes a few minutes per strip.

Part two