Materials | Cape Falcon Kayak

Video: Bending oak problems and a new rib-rounding jig

August 2024August 2024Leave a comment

Cutting up bending oak for this particular boat kind of sucked. I realized that the wood I had been saving for this project had more inclusions than I thought, so I decided to dig to the bottom of the pile where I abandoned some decent boards a few years ago. I planed and sliced...

St. Lawrence River Skiff: Varnishing the drive box and keel

August 2024August 2024Leave a comment

I’ve been lucky enough to avoid epoxy and varnish for most of my boat building life, although both are making more frequent appearances since we developed the pedal drive adapter box. The plan here was just to varnish the box, but I decided to do the bottom board as well just to keep it...

Video: Can anyone tell me what’s going on here?

August 2024August 2024Leave a comment

Can anyone tell me what’s going on here? This freshly cut totally fine looking and smelling white oak snaps apart like crackers with about half the force that it normally takes a very strange break? It actually broke into three pieces with the middle piece about 2 inches long flying out of the way....

Video: Nice finds at the salvage yard today

August 2024August 2024Leave a comment

Nice finds at the salvage yard today. Clear yellow cedar 1×6 (full dimension) $1.39 linear foot. CVG red cedar 5/4 x 10 $5 per lineal foot. Trash grade cedar 2 x 12 x 16 with a clear 2×4 on each edge $2.89 lineal foot. ___ This post was originally featured on our Instagram feed....

Video: Destructive testing a station lamination

July 2024August 2024Leave a comment

It actually broke at 108 pounds! ___ This post was originally featured on our Instagram feed. See the original post and discussion here. Follow Cape Falcon Kayak on Instagram »...

Stumbled upon some CVG framing lumber

June 2024July 2024Leave a comment

I’m getting ready to start building a small sailboat and I was planning to make the whole thing out of cedar and mahogany, but then I ran into this at the lumberyard. This is 80% clear Douglas Fir! Can you believe they were selling this as framing lumber? I paid $70 bucks for all...

One nice thing about Home Depot

October 2023July 2024Leave a comment

The nice thing about Home Depot is that nobody gives an F if I spend 45 minutes hi-grading the stud piles for boatbuilding wood. Kiln dried, barely any knots, It’s not a bad poor mans clear spruce, to be honest. I’ll be cutting these down to 5×7/8 when I get home. ___ This post...

On YouTube: Adding Color to a Skin on Frame Boat

October 2023July 2024Leave a comment

New video on the Cape Falcon Kayak YouTube channel! We just finished a massive color test with our 40 different colors of acid dye and earth pigment applied to the nylon cloth with the coating system that we use and exposed to sunlight for 1000 hours so you can see the results before and...

Video: making winders and lashing the canoe

June 2023June 2023Leave a comment

On my kayaks, I normally hand wrap my winders but with so many stringers on a canoe I usually take a shortcut with the drill. These definitely aren’t as nice to lash with, but they’re a heck of a lot faster to make. The cord itself is a flat waxed artificial sinew that is...

Back to the easy part: building the actual boat

May 2023June 2023Leave a comment

Now that I have working prototypes for the pedal drive, rudder, and seat, I can turn my attention back to the easy part: building the actual boat. This is the white oak that we chainsaw milled last month. The grain orientation was wrong for what I’m doing so I started by resawing it into...

Some questions about marine glue ups and finishing

May 2023June 2023Leave a comment

I have some questions about marine glue ups and finishing, and a bonus question about 3-D plastic printing for anyone who’s going to take pity on me: I’ve been doing a lot of epoxy work for the last few weeks, prepping all the parts for the canoe pedal drive and I have to be...

Video: Making steam-bending oak for our kayak cockpit coamings

April 2023June 2023Leave a comment

Making steam-bending oak for our kayak cockpit coamings. Normally I just buy this stuff but all of my suppliers were running low so we fired up the chainsaw mill to tackle this log a friend generously donated (thanks again Don!). Coamings are a challenge because the wood has to be perfectly straight grained and...

Talking color and rigging on the new LPB

April 2023June 2023Leave a comment

Just a random shot from some filming I was doing yesterday on the new 225 pound size LPB. This shows our standard deck rigging pattern which is an eclectic mix of bungee, rope, plastic,and leather. Every piece has a very specific job to do, for example, I would never use bungee directly ahead of...

Video: chainsaw milling some Oregon White Oak

April 2023June 2023Leave a comment

Here we are chainsaw milling some Oregon White Oak to turn into kayak and canoe ribs and possibly coamings. To be clear chainsaw milling is my last choice for getting this sort of wood, but it is an option if you don’t have any others. This whole operation made me a bit twitchy because...

The secret to any good boat coating

March 2023June 2023Leave a comment

The secret to any good boat coating is lots of light, lots of ventilation, proper working height, good walking paths, and being well organized. Actually following the instructions is helpful as well. Here I’m working with the two-part polyurethane sold by skinboats.com. The product goes on wet on wet over the course of a...