Materials | Cape Falcon Kayak

Some of my favorite skin on frame projects + images, Post 5

May 2020September 2022Leave a comment

While we grind through video work for the next couple weeks I’m sharing some of my favorite skin boat images: In yesterday‘s post I talked about a commission I took 10 years ago to build a replica of a Hudson Bay kayak completely from scratch. The customer had an old wood block print given...

Some of my favorite skin-on-frame projects + images, Post 4

May 2020September 2022Leave a comment

While we grind through video work for the next couple weeks I’m sharing some of my favorite skin boat images. Of my many insane wood salvage schemes over the years, collecting rib and coaming stock for a Baffin Bay replica made entirely from driftwood was neither the most arduous nor the most hazardous, but...

Skin on frame solo canoe build, Day 9

April 2020September 2022Leave a comment

Skin on frame solo canoe, Day 9. Build time: 1hr. Total build time 43 hours. Materials cost roughly $400. 14’9” long, 30” wide, 12” deep in the center. Weight 32lbs. Frame: western red cedar longitudinals, white oak ribs, ash gunwales, laminated walnut seat from Northstar Canoes. Skin: 9oz nylon with 4 coats of 2...

Skin on frame solo canoe build, Day 3

April 2020September 2022Leave a comment

Skin on frame solo canoe, Day 3. Build time: 4hrs. Today I finished and temporarily attached the stems and made what are technically the gunwales, but in skin on frame we use that term for what would technically be the sheer strake, so I usually just end up calling them rub rails. I’m always...

FYI for my students: Oak supplies are going to be limited

April 2020September 2022Leave a comment

This post is just a quick FYI for my students who follow me here: I went down to the mill today and picked up what I’m told is going to be the last of the bending Oak for an indefinite time period. I managed to get enough wood for about 14 kayaks but I’m...

Video: The first Cape Falcon COVID casualty

April 2020July 2023Leave a comment

Well, The first Cape Falcon COVID casualty is that we are officially out of bending oak. This last batch of ribs went out yesterday and I just ribbed my own kayak with scrap wood! Hopefully we can get more in the not too distant future so the vintage 1940s Parks planer doesn’t starve. Chomp...

On YouTube: Choosing Wood for Skin on Frame Kayaks

March 2020September 2022Leave a comment

OK that was way harder than I thought it was going to be but I’m pretty proud of this one. Check out the latest video that we uploaded to the Cape Falcon Kayak YouTube channel titled: Choosing Wood For Skin on Frame Kayaks. (Embedded below, and also in the Free Skin on Frame Kayak...

Timelapse: Nailing off cockpit coamings

March 2020September 2022Leave a comment

Thanks to outsourcing, I am mostly free from mass producing kayak cockpit coamings these days. (I’m also mostly free from making money on them, but that’s just fine with me.) Reshooting our cockpit coaming instructional videos this week necessitated the construction of a small batch. Here Liz and I tag team nailing on the...

Video: Running bending oak through the 1940s Parks planer

February 2020September 2022Leave a comment

When I first started buying bending Oak from Ben Deumling of Zena Forest Products there was no amount of money I could pay him to run this tough wet wood through his planer. The issue is that green white oak is just dripping with tannic acid which is pretty brutal on tools that would...

On YouTube: Could Rubio Monocoat be the perfect finish for a Greenland paddle?

February 2020September 2022Leave a comment

Over many years of teaching people to build skin on frame kayaks I developed a fast, easy system for building Greenland paddles (now available as a FREE hour long video on the our site), but as great as the system is, I’ve never really liked any of the many different coatings I’ve tried over...

I’m going to have some explaining to do…

February 2020September 2022Leave a comment

All right guys, it’s gonna take me about 30 minutes to get home in rush-hour traffic so we have that much time for you to help me explain to Liz that I literally had no other choice but to buy these boards despite the fact that I was going to the wood store for...

Richard’s canoe, ribbed with kild-dried oak

February 2020September 2022Leave a comment

One of the downsides of my canoe building system is that it requires really good bending wood, or does it? One of my students just sent me this picture of a pack canoe that he just finished ribbing with kiln dried white oak. He wrote the following: “Hey Brian, Just wanted to let you...

Guenter’s carbon fiber F1 kayak

January 2020September 2022Leave a comment

When Guenter, an engineer from Austria, proposed building a carbon fiber framed F1, I told him he was crazy. A few months later he sent me these pictures and a full PDF of how he built it. The finished kayak weighs 20 pounds, took 80 hours to build, and cost him $750 to make!...

One last post from the Paddlesports Design class

January 2020September 2022Leave a comment

One last post from the Paddlesports Design class at James Madison University. We had a few folks ask about the blue-teal-green gradient that student @zach.morrison_design was able to achieve. Zach was kind enough to let us share his time lapse of the dye process. The three different colors of acid dye were applied at...

North Alaskan Replica Kayak Frame Build, Day 8: Picking up more bending oak

August 2019September 2022Leave a comment

North Alaskan Replica Kayak Frame Build, Day 8). Today I drove down to see Ben Deumling of Zena Forest Products to pick up some bending oak for the kayak ribs. A second generation sustainable forester, Ben and family manage a 1300 acre parcel of FSC certified woodland in the heart of the Willamette valley,...