A while while back I posted about Joe, a high school senior who decided to build a skin on frame rowing shell for his senior project. He had previously built one of my skin on frame canoes when he was 16 so I agreed to mentor him through this project. Joe designed the rowing shell himself and worked out all the details with occasional input from me and here is the finished result. He says it weighs about 10 pounds more than a typical rowing shell, but otherwise it seems to perform pretty much the same. Congratulations Joe for completing the project and good luck in college!
Side-note: if you noticed the skin is a little bit wrinkly here that’s the result of colder temperatures and high humidity. When it warms up, it snaps drum tight, and then for reasons I still don’t fully understand after a couple years this cycling stops and it’s tight all the time. This can be avoided by skinning with polyester, but I still choose nylon because it has much better puncture and impact resistance.
___
This post was originally featured on our Instagram feed.
See the original post and discussion here.
