Building North Alaskan replica kayaks

This month in the shop we are swinging back towards kayaks again with a commission for two different North Alaskan replica kayak frames. Both of the original kayaks are housed in the Burke museum in Seattle WA, And likely date to sometime around the early 20th century. Both were surveyed by Harvey Golden and are in Harvey’s latest book Kayaks of Alaska.

The customer has asked that the frames match the historic artifacts as closely as possible, which in this case means that the longitudinal frame members are sawn, and the transverse members are hand carved. Lashing will be rawhide and deck beams will be pinned with nails. We are using western white pine because it’s the closest thing I can find in strength, appearance, and working characteristics to the Black spruce this would have been made of originally.

A visit to Harvey’s amazing kayak museum and research library seemed like an appropriate start to the project. Although I can’t repost them due to copyright reasons it was invaluable to have the opportunity to look at photographs of the original kayaks.

In some ways these kayaks are very simple and in others they are quite complex due to the challenge of reproducing the exact sheer which needs to be shaped from much wider planks. There’s also just a heckuva lot of deck beams including peaked ones that will need to be fabricated to look like natural crooks.

I appreciate the opportunity to explore a form that isn’t just another Greenland kayak or Baidarka. The overall form of these kayaks is quite sensible. The hull is about as close to optimal as you can get for maximum efficiency at a moderately fast pace, without sacrificing stability. The high peaked foredeck would allow for more powerful (and more comfortable) paddling ergonomics. Finally the lack of fine ends reduces drag and increases hull speed. I won’t have an opportunity to paddle these but I hope to find time to build a skinned version in the future. In the meantime, enjoy the build!