East Greenland kayak build, Day 2, Building the deck. (FYI there’s music)
On day two I fasten the ends of the gunwales together, build all the deck beams, and install them to complete the deck.
Traditionally the deck beam joinery in Arctic kayaks ranged from extremely precise mortise and tenon work to bluntly whittled ends pushed into a shallow carved carved pocket. I haven’t actually seen photographs of the inside of this particular historic kayak, but unless I’m re-creating a frame for display I usually just use the same mortise and tenon techniques that I’ve developed for all my kayaks. The tenon sits in one quadrant, which makes it a bit easier to make and also leaves really good reference angles on the shoulders to stabilize the joint.
A diagonal peg further stabilizes the deck beam to gunwale connection. There are various methods to do this but I use this one because it’s the easiest and fastest. It’s also traditional on East Greenland kayaks.
Unlike furniture building where a little bit of joint movement leads to the rapid demise of the workpiece in use, in a kayak it’s actually preferable that these joints are slightly sloppy. Skin on frame kayaks barely flex on the water, but they do so with tremendous force so perfect fitting can lead to cracked joints. For the same reason we don’t use any glue in the joints.
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