Skin on Frame Canoe Time Lapse 10.
Continued from yesterday, I always put the skin on in a single day because once the fabric is wetted it must stay continuously wet until the process is finished. The reason for this because the first time that raw nylon dries out it shrinks powerfully and will never loosen up that much again or shrink that tight again even if re-wetted. How I do this depends on the type of boat I’m building. When I use the same fabric on kayaks I always sew it on dry because in that context it can shrink so much it will crush the frame if I put it on wet the way I do with my canoes.
For the first time in this whole series I forgot to start the camera to record a step, so sewing up on top of the stems is going to have to remain a mystery for now.
The coloring here is Jacquard acid dye. Using fabric dye on the cloth has upsides and downsides, as does every other way that you can put color on a skinboat. I typically stick to lighter, warmer colors when using fabric dye because they handle the weathering process better. It’s kind of a complicated subject so I made a super detailed video about it that you can find on the Cape Falcon Kayak YouTube channel.
For a bit of fun I mounted our Aputure Lightstorm 300D studio light (which I have nicknamed The Light of God for its blinding output) inside the canoe during dyeing. This made it pretty much impossible for me to see what I was doing but it looks cool on camera! Here’s the numbers for this video:
Task times in minutes:
5 pre piloting the screw holes
5 setting the screws
5 driving the screws
5 unclamping the outwales
20 sewing up the stem tops
10 trimming the fabric
10 masking the outwales
50 dyeing the cloth
Task time: 1 hr 50 min
Total build time so far: 35 hrs 20 min
___
This post was originally featured on our Instagram feed.
See the original post and discussion here.
