North Alaskan Kayak Frame Build. Day 5). The day started off on a good note when after setting up the gunwales I determined that I had nailed the complex sheer curve precisely. Unfortunately this momentary triumph was followed by eight hours of wasting expensive plywood and fretting at the shape of the kayak deck.
Generally I approach the deck by building a set of spreader forms to match the stations on Harvey’s drawings and wrap the gunwales around them. Some amount of fairing is appropriate and inevitable, but I try to keep things inside of a quarter inch because I know that Harvey‘s drawings may be faired slightly from the original measurements as well. If you fair too much though you can lose important performance features of the boat.
Usually after enough tweaking and fussing I feel confident that I understand the intention of the builder and can move forward, but today was not that day. I set the deck up, and hung it on the fence across the street over and over to compare to the actual to the drawing and the lines just weren’t adding up. So I spent the whole day trying to figure out if the error was mine or Harv’s, bothering Harvey for his research notes, and trying to gain guidance by looking at the other collected examples and trying to get a feel for what the original builders intended.
In the end it’s going to come down to a judgment call about what is more “authentic”: the exact measurements or the general features of the type. The building system for these kayaks appears to be extremely consistent so I’ll probably end up going with the latter. Mind you we are talking about a difference that probably doesn’t matter to anyone but me. I suffer greatly for my inability to differentiate integrity from insanity.
In other Arctic news: Donald Trump wants to buy Greenland.
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