Cape Falcon Kayak

Day 3, Skin on Frame River Touring Kayak: Bending ribs and lashing the keel

February 2020September 2022Leave a comment

Day 3, Skin on Frame River Touring Kayak: Bending ribs and lashing the keel. I started the day by reluctantly admitting that the steam box I’ve been using for the last 12 years has finally expired. It’s always hard to let things like this go even if it’s just something you made out of...

Day 2, Skin-on-Frame River Touring Kayak: Building the deck and cutting ribs

February 2020September 2022Leave a comment

Skin-on-Frame River Touring Kayak Day 2. Building the deck and cutting ribs. Such a relief to be free from the grueling detail work of replica building and back to the fast, fun, and easy process of building my own boats. My biggest challenge with prototype work is just to trust my intuition and not...

Day 1, Skin on Frame River Touring Kayak: Miscellaneous prep work

February 2020September 2022Leave a comment

Skin on Frame River Touring Kayak. Day 1, misc. prep work. A white water capable skin-on-frame touring kayak is something I’ve been working on intermittently for a long time. Basically, I’m looking for something to fill the niche on multi day river trips with a lot of flat water and a few significant rapids...

Filling kayak rib orders

February 2020September 2022Leave a comment

Filling kayak rib orders today which is not my favorite activity, although I do like seeing the grain and watching my vintage Parks planer blast out wood chips like a snowblower. The wood we use is Oregon white oak which is a little bit stronger and a little bit denser than some other white...

Cape Falcon Kayak 2020 Update

February 2020July 20237 Comments

Before we set sail a quick point of order. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail in this update about the chronic illness I’ve been fighting for a while now, but one of the more challenging aspects of my life right now is trying to balance honesty with decorum when choosing...

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...

Carrying canoes for mental health: Update

February 2020September 2022Leave a comment

It’s been almost exactly a year now since Tom and Kyle completed their epic journey to climb self-supported 10,000 vertical feet to arrive at the Mount Everest base camp (17,000 ft) carrying Cape Falcon canoes. Tom and Kyle undertook this feat of brutal endurance to raise awareness for mental health issues and also to...

On YouTube: Two new videos on the North Alaskan kayak build

January 2020September 2022Leave a comment

Turn the sound on for this one! In addition to the time lapse videos you’ve already seen here we just uploaded two new videos to our YouTube channel. The first is a 14 minute video montage set to music that shows every single step in building these beautiful traditional kayaks. The second is a...

North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build Timelapse video 14 of…12?

January 2020September 2022Leave a comment

North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build Timelapse video 14 of…12? In this last time-lapse I attach the coaming which rests directly on the deck stringers (as opposed to the deck beams) and is supported on the sides by small stanchions. The lashing for the coaming is kind of neat and wraps around the stringers, the...

North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build Timelapse video 13 of, um, 12?

January 2020September 2022Leave a comment

North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build Timelapse video 13 of, um, 12? In this second to last video I’m lashing on the deck stringers. One of the nice things about having so many deck beams is that the deck stringers could be fairly minimal and still be strong enough to do their job. Even though...

North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build Timelapse video 12 of 12

January 2020September 2022Leave a comment

North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build Timelapse video 12 of 12 This is actually the second time we tied on the stringers because I wasn’t paying attention to the drawing and realized way too late that the longest stringer is supposed to be the second one down. It’s such a minor difference that if it...

North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build timelapse video 11 of 12

January 2020September 2022Leave a comment

North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build timelapse video 11 of 12. After a day spent shaping the ends of the keel we started lashing on the keel and stringers. You can’t see it here but the keel is lashed on in a unique way where it is drilled at each rib and a running lashing...

North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build timelapse video 10 of 12

January 2020September 2022Leave a comment

North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build timelapse video 10 of 12. North Alaskan kayaks don’t have separate stem pieces so the ends of the keel are carved out of much larger pieces of wood to give the ends strength and shape. To replicate this I glued wood to the ends of the keel. The original...

North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build Time Lapse video 9 of 12

January 2020September 2022Leave a comment

North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build Time Lapse video 9 of 12. After a test ribbing and a full ribbing that turned out to be wrong, we finally steamed in the final ribs. For steam I use a wallpaper steamer connected to I crudely built plywood steam box. The wood here is some incredible quality...

North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build timelapse. Video 8 of 12

January 2020September 2022Leave a comment

North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build timelapse. Video 8 of 12. In this video we cut and prep the rib stock. Originally I created a somewhat complicated formula to determine the rib lengths to match the drawing, but after ribbing the kayaks I realized that the compensations had overshot the mark and the deck had...