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Re: making my own kayak plans for river kayak
By:Nolan Penney
Date: 2/1/1999, 2:08 pm

I really disagree with you about full size plans being a help for the non pro. I to am a non-pro, to the fullest extent. I have built a whole whopping one kayak. Two if you consider the first one that got thrown out during the stitching process. That first one that got thrown out was done using full sized plans, and got thrown out directly as a result of using full sized templates.

Paper is perfectly willing to flex and twist and lead to improper curves and shapes. It stretches and skids inside the copier, giving skewed outlines. And copiers are not perfectly aligned ever. Then you have to manage to get it transfered to the wood, which is no simple feat. A stitch wheel (what I did) requires you to perfectly track the drawings while it slides on the wood. Then you have to highlight the nearly invisible prick marks you've made in the wood to see it to cut. Carbon paper may be easier, but is even more prone to sliding around the wood.

A batten techique is so easy I don't understand why the kit makers don't crow it at the top of their lungs. You mark the wood with one foot spaced lines. And then from the bottom of the sheet of wood you measure up the appropriate distances and mark. Then use a pin or nail to mark those locations. Take a piece of nicely flexible wood that is consistent (or any other consistent material for that matter), bend and pin it against those marks, and draw the curved line that results. VERY pretty! and oh so quick. I spent days fighting to mark the full sized templates, and one afternoon doing it with battens. You couldn't pay me to go back to full sized templates.

About a 12 panel s&g, I agree with the others about either backing off the number of panels, or switching to strips. Trying to wire up 12 panels in any sort of consistent and symetrical manner sounds like a nightmare at best. I doubt you can do it, honestly. My MillCreek has but five hull panels, and suits me just fine. And five panels was enough of a cussing match in symetry for me. It's the nature of s&g to have hard chines, or hardish chines as my MillCreek has with its five hull panels. Hard chines have some advantages, so weight this and your planned usages against a rounded bottom which is far better suited to stripping.

As for building the forms for setting up a stripper, that's really easy, especially if you've got it modeled in a 3d type of computer program, or at least draw it on the right graph paper (3d, orthagonal I think). You then simply make slices, view the slices on end, and duplicate it in the wood you use for your frames. What's especially nice about this is with the frames, typically spaced around 1 foot apart, you can very clearly see the boat, and make changes if you don't like what you see before you actually build the boat.

For rounded bottom boats there are other programs listed there that will do the job of setting up offset tables and stations, but the programs are far more complex to run and will not give you full scale drawings of the panels you are proposing. The Careen will do the job, albet only in seven or nine panels. The bilge line can be spread for the bottom panel, and it then goes up five lines as I recall. It's been a little while since I played with it. The drawings it gives of the templates are poor actually, though the offset tables seem decent. You can still use this for stripping by getting different station measurements along the hull and using that as the shape of form. Flesh it out and smooth out the hard lines to suit yourself. Remember, you can use shimms on those forms and sand them to shape. And if you just don't like one, you take it out and make another. You just want to be symetrical and fair the lines to look pretty. I got your drawing and your table. I couldn't get my machine to read the table because I couldn't figure out the language it was in. In any case, the design looks rather "normal" to me, so I don't see you running into any horrible problems with it by design, or inherent in the building of it.

Messages In This Thread

making my own kayak plans for river kayak
Robert -- 1/29/1999, 5:01 pm
Re: making my own kayak plans for river kayak
Nolan Penney -- 2/1/1999, 7:22 am
Re: making my own kayak plans for river kayak
Robert -- 2/1/1999, 7:50 am
Re: making my own kayak plans for river kayak
Nolan Penney -- 2/1/1999, 2:08 pm
a couple of tips
Paul Jacobson -- 2/1/1999, 8:51 pm
Re: making my own kayak plans for river kayak
Shawn Baker -- 2/1/1999, 10:54 am
Re: making my own kayak plans for river kayak
Robert -- 2/1/1999, 11:42 am
Re: making my own kayak plans for river kayak
Shawn Baker -- 2/1/1999, 1:45 pm
Re: making my own kayak plans for river kayak
Robert -- 1/30/1999, 2:47 pm
Re: making my own kayak plans for river kayak
Stan Heeres -- 1/29/1999, 9:58 pm