I started yesterday by setting deck up according to my existing plan set and then scaling from the drawing and building a whole new set of spreader forms. There were definitely some differences between the two but it’s been about 12 years since my initial replica and I can’t remember if those were actual errors or intentional choices!
Measuring the sheer curve, we come to the first major discrepancy between what I’m doing here and the museum original. The original has a 5 inch deep curve between the gunwale tips and my set up here is showing 4 1/4 inches. I would much rather build this 5 inches because it would be a slightly better boat and a noticeably prettier boat, but to get that I would need to either buy wider boards and perfectly cut the curve into them, or laminate the sheer with a ton of expensive clamps.
I might do that for myself but there’s no way I would do that to my students for such a minimal performance gain. I try to keep our building system simple to give people a solid foundation in skin on frame building before they tackle more complicated projects.
This difference in sheer is an interesting subject. It’s possible that the flare angle of my gunwales is wrong, or the original is bent from storage conditions, or that the original gunwales were shaped into this curve. All of these are possible but for a variety of reasons I don’t think that’s what’s happening here.
Some thing I’ve learned the hard way salvaging logs by kayak is that most logs on beaches were once growing over the water which introduces a lot of tension into the wood. When you mill a log like that 16 foot long straight cuts will often spring into a 1/2 to 1 1 1/2 inch curve, which might explain the sheer visible on several kayaks of this type. Sawn lumber was available in West Greenland as early as the late 1700s.
Further lending this impression is how is the subtle recurve in the bow relates to the pinch in the plan view shape and a somewhat opposite effect in the stern that would naturally result from gunwales with a gentle continuous curve.
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