There’s nothing like volume and tight deadlines to hone a building process down to razor sharp efficiency. Here I am laminating curved deck beams using a simple three peg mold and spring clamps. It only takes a few minutes to make the jig and I can build 30 of these in an hour using this method.
For 15 years I worked with students in person where we completed six kayaks in six days every two weeks. What started out as a long, challenging, workdays, and slowly transformed into relaxed workdays where it felt like we were all just hanging out and doing a bit of woodworking, and at the end of it a kayak magically appeared.
Interestingly much of that efficiency came from my students rather than myself. Nearly every class someone would suggest doing something in a way I hadn’t thought of before and I would incorporate that idea into the system. Even though it’s not visible to anyone but me, every single boat carries a secret history of everyone who has interacted with the system, which seems way cooler to me than it just being all about me and my ideas.
I don’t teach in person anymore but this collective design process continues in the form of feedback from on my online courses and plan sets.
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