I want to take a moment here to thank everyone who contributed to the GoFundMe that I put up at the beginning of this year to buy a trailer for my homeless friend Thomas, who has been living in a tent for the last year. Competition for small travel trailers right now is absolutely...
"Thank you to everyone who helped us buy a trailer for Thomas!"Continue readingCategory: Behind the Scenes
The less glamorous side of what we do here.
The less glamorous side of what we do here. Today we are mass producing bits and bobbles for the kayak building kits. Pretty tedious but I’m glad to have a job....
On YouTube: A discussion of the latest canoe design
We just posted a new video on the Cape Falcon Kayak YouTube channel talking about the latest canoe design, and as usual 25% of everything I’m saying is already out of date! Lots of nice clips in this one and a clear synopsis of the building system. Full video embedded at the bottom of...
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Video: Final scraps of footage from the recent canoe launch
Final scraps of footage from the recent canoe launch. This one is dedicated to Liz, (the real talent around here) who managed to keep me framed and in focus despite being handicapped by an experimental sailing canoe with no rocker. By request, I’m building her a boat that actually turns this week....
Catching up on videos
I’m very lucky to be able to make a living with these gadgets, but I’m seriously starting to miss life before video when a kayak build took a week instead of a month, and I got to see my students in person. Today we are re-shooting our float bags for skin-on-frame kayaks video, and...
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Video: Welcome to the apocalypse.
Not exactly the seven trumpets that I was picturing, but I don’t think we can definitively rule it out either......
Always filming…
Always filming….today we made a tutorial showing how to put a drain plug in a skin on frame kayak. Drain plugs are something I’ve done in the past but not very often because I was on such a tight schedule to get six boats done in six days with six students. It’s also just...
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Updates to the FREE Skin-on-Frame Kayak Prep Course
As of today we have officially replaced (almost) all the videos in our FREE Skin-on-Frame Prep Course. With over seven hours of content, this covers materials, tool selection, sharpening, safety, wood selection, making a coaming, laying out and plunge-routing the gunwales, laminating curved deck beams, cutting rolling bevels – basically all of the super...
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Friends, I wanted to share this fundraiser
Friends, I wanted to share this fundraiser I started to help a friend who is homeless. Thomas is 60 years old and used to be a welder before health issues ended his ability to work. Over time debt took his house and now he lives in a tent. Right now I’m trying to raise...
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Reshooting videos and reshooting again
The only thing more painful than surrendering to the time and technical complexity that goes into making good instructional video is getting to the very end of a project and realizing that you need to start over… As we reshoot our entire skin on frame prep course, one of the hardest videos is: selecting...
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The reality of teaching on video
The reality of teaching online boat building courses in a partially natural light studio on a partly cloudy day: “Hey guys Brian Schulz here with Cape Falcon Kayak with an update to the rib shaping….seriously?! hey Liz does it look like we have another sun patch after that cloud? No? OK let’s bring up...
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Messing around with the studio lights while we wait for the boat to cure
Messing around with the studio lights while we wait for the coating to fully cure. Everyone who’s ever built a skin boat has done this, but it’s still pretty cool....
Small business, smaller van.
Small business, smaller van. Shipping day here at the shop. My imported from Japan Kei class Subaru Sambar just got a rack to serve as overflow storage for my boat problem. Shorter and narrower than a Honda Fit with twice the room, this tiny supercharged van might be the perfect minimalist vehicle if you...
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Indecision…
Obviously I’m not having a problem deciding on a curve........
Our video setup
Like many things, video is one of those places where spending too much money, too little money, or buying the wrong stuff all causes problems. My minimalist tendencies drive me towards the simplest cleanest systems that will allow me to achieve my goals. Slowly I’ve narrowed in on the following setup which is just...
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