North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build, Day 6: Making good progress today. After yesterday‘s debacle it was nice to see the deck shape for the smaller of the two kayaks come together easily. After making some final adjustments to the larger kayak deck shape it was time to temporarily set up the keel to check...
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North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build. Day 5: Fretting over deck shaping
North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build. Day 5). The day started off on a good note when after setting up the gunwales I determined that I had nailed the complex sheer curve precisely. Unfortunately this momentary triumph was followed by eight hours of wasting expensive plywood and fretting at the shape of the kayak deck....
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North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build. Day 4: Final decisions on rib and deck beam placement and mortising the gunwales
North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build. Day 4) Today I made the final decisions on rib and deck beam placement and mortised the gunwales. For this project I’m recording the dimensions in standard measurements but also in anthropometric units. Generally I’m not very interested in anthropometric measurements because they can’t be applied to the body...
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North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build, Day 3: Laid out and shaped the full size gunwales
North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build, Day 3: Laid out and shaped the full size gunwales today for both boats. The wood I’m using is pine purchased from Reclaim NW. I was grateful to find this at a salvage yard, because these kayaks wouldn’t have been as authentic with cedar or fir and also I...
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North Alaskan kayak frame build, Day 2: Finding the sheer curve
North Alaskan kayak frame build, Day 2). Today I continued my efforts to match the sheer curve of the survey kayak, building two more models, the last of which is satisfactory. Owing to the finished dimensions, I believe the original builder may have started with sawn planks 4 inches wide, which would have been...
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North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build, Day 1: Prep
North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build, Day 1) Started the day by sharpening my tools and trying to get back into a boat building mindset. Although I did buy a couple of carving knives specifically for this build, generally I don’t have much in the way of fancy handtools. It’s not so much about money...
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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...
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Some of our favorite skin-on-frame photos: Tom’s F1 in Lake Powell
We’re sharing some of our favorite skin-on-frame photos from the last 15 years while we build the tiny house. (Check out @actuallytiny). Tom paddles his F1 kayak through the sandstone moonscape of Lake Powell. Whether it’s days on the Green River through Canyonlands National Park or lower down on Lake Powell, paddling through slick...
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Paddling the Columbia River from source to sea in an F1 kayak
I am proud to share that artist and photographer Claire Dibble has begun her 1200 mile source-to-sea voyage on the Columbia River in a Cape Falcon F1 Kayak she built herself. Below I have copied text from her website explaining the details and the purpose of the journey in her own words. You can...
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Seeing the first student-built canoes hit the water
After spending all of 2018 designing a new type of skin-on-frame canoe building system, it’s very cool to see the first on the water photos showing up. My usual process for designing a class of boats is to work on it in my shop for about five years then release plans. It seems like...
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Some of our favorite skin-on-frame photos: East Greenland kayak replica details
We’re sharing some of our favorite skin-on-frame photos from the last 15 years while we build the tiny house. (Check out @actuallytiny). Even when working to a survey, we don’t usually build skin-on-frame kayaks the way they were actually built historically. It is fun once in a while though to replicate a particularly interesting...
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Some of our favorite skin-on-frame photos: A class’s worth of kayaks
We’re sharing some of our favorite skin-on-frame photos from the last 15 years while we build the tiny house. (Check out @actuallytiny). If you want to get good at something there’s no substitute for just doing a lot of it. The speed and low cost of skin-on-frame building has given me the opportunity to...
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Some of our favorite skin-on-frame photos: Ryc and Mona in their F1 kayaks
We’re sharing some of our favorite skin-on-frame photos from the last 15 years while we build the tiny house. (Check out @actuallytiny). It’s strange to be old enough now to have a real sense of the passage of time. I took this picture of my friends Ryc and Mona Over 10 years ago in...
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Some of our favorite skin-on-frame photos: Checking the lines on an F1
We’re sharing some of our favorite skin-on-frame photos from the last 15 years while we build the tiny house. (Check out @actuallytiny). Here Tom and I are checking out the very intentionally unfair lines of my F1 kayak design. Visually the curves seem to flow nicely when the kayak is finished but a lot...
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Sharing some of our favorite skin-on-frame photos: Bending ribs
We’re sharing some of our favorite skin-on-frame photos from the last 15 years while we build the tiny house. (Check out @actuallytiny). When I first started building boats I went to visit a local cabinet maker named Robert who had built an entire sailboat in his backyard. I thought he would be a good...
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