Nothing detracts from the joy of boat building like the work of running a small boat building business! The running joke here is that owning your own business gives you the freedom to work all the time. This year we’re sinking our teeth into replacing the entire Cape Falcon video library to reflect our...
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On YouTube: Could Rubio Monocoat be the perfect finish for a Greenland paddle?
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...
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I’m going to have some explaining to do…
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...
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Video: Some cut footage from our whitewater testing of the river kayak prototype
Turn the sound on! Among the many challenges of making good video is the ruthless selection process which inevitably results in some pretty nice footage not making the final cut. Here’s a short montage of reject clips that from the YouTube video I’m making right now about our trip down to Clackamas River in...
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Video: Paddling the river kayak prototype and an F1
Tom and I took an F1 and the new river boat down to the water today for more testing. The tugboat waves were way too small to surf but that didn’t stop us from trying! Note: I added GPS speed data to some of these clips and left the sound on so you can...
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Video: First test paddle in the river kayak prototype
Turn the sound on! I build a LOT of prototype kayaks but it’s very rare for me to land on a candidate for further development. This is one of them. To recap: I’ve been working for about 10 years on a kayak for self-support trips on rivers that have a lot of flat water...
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Timelapse: Skinning the river kayak prototype
I’m still working on mixing down the video we shot yesterday of the test paddle of the new skin on Frame River Touring Kayak. In the meantime enjoy this time lapse of the skinning process. Also I’m curious how people feel about IGTV? Generally I keep my videos here down to one minute and...
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Day 8, Skin on Frame River Touring Kayak: Rigging and Accessories
Day 8, Skin on Frame River Touring Kayak: rigging and accessories. I spent years getting the cockpit for this boat perfect so I’m not touching anything there, but I am experimenting with some alternate deck line arrangements and a drain plug. I’m leaving the bow and stern tied with English bridle leather straps because...
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Messing around with the studio lights while we wait for the boat to cure
Messing around with the studio lights while we wait for the coating to fully cure. Everyone who’s ever built a skin boat has done this, but it’s still pretty cool....
Day 7, Skin on Frame River Touring kayak: Coating the Kayak
Day 7, Skin on Frame River Touring kayak: coating the kayak. All of our kayaks are coated with the Spirit Line two-part polyurethane. Having tried many other options there is nothing that I’ve found that is even half as tough. It is, however, not a very easy or forgiving product. Being the poor capitalist...
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Day 6, Skin on Frame River touring kayak: Skinning
Day 6, Skin on Frame River touring kayak: skinning day! If had to rank the reasons to buy our kayak building course, my skinning method would near the top. Not only is our method MUCH faster, there are just so many ways to mess up your kayak here. Some skins can be sewn up...
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Video: Running rib lashings
Someone asked in a comment about my rib lashing method. Here is a short video of our standard running lashing method. I add additional wraps and fraps at high stress points. Sometimes I use other lashing patterns as well. It really just depends on what I’m trying to accomplish on the particular boat I’m...
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Timelapse: Bending the ribs into the river kayak prototype
I had to pause the river kayak build for a few days to catch up on all the non-boatbuilding parts of the business. To keep you entertained in the meantime, he’s a time lapse we made of bending the ribs!...
Day 5, Skin on Frame River Touring Kayak: Finishing the deck and oiling the frame
Day 5, Skin on Frame River Touring Kayak: Finishing the deck and oiling the frame. I added the aft deck and foredeck stringers mostly following my usual formula for the F1 kayak, but decided to go with an ash foredeck stringer which I could make a bit lower profile and retain the same strength...
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Day 4, Skin on Frame River Touring Kayak: Tying on Stringers
Skin on Frame River Touring Kayak Day 4, tying on stringers. Things slowed down a little bit today while I was trying to decide how I wanted to place the stringers and terminate the keel. Like I said yesterday, the thing that will eat more time than anything in a build is stopping to...
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