West Greenland Kayak Build, frame number 3, building the deck.
I started the new frame with a few mistakes. I missed a rotted area when prepping the gunwales and then screwed up a mortise in a way that’s actually a bit of a structural issue. Nothing I can’t work around but still a bit annoying.
Building off of what I learned on the last frame, as much as I loved how nimble that shape was, it has some issues. The bow is sitting too high and the stern has too little volume causing it to squat and plow water when sprinting and especially surfing. Its also just a bit less stability than I was targeting.
The last frame never looked quite right to me and going back through the measurements I realized I had in fact made a mistake that narrowed the aft sections unintentionally. The newer, correct deck shape looks much more natural.
I also tweaked the rib and deck beam locations for a more even spacing and corrected another dumb measurement error that was pushing a rib into my sciatic nerve. An inch can make a huge difference in comfort here.
So I’m removing a bit of volume in the front and adding some to the back to hopefully achieve some extra stability and top end efficiency without pushing the bow down so far that I lose that lovely playfulness.
We’ll see what actually happens in a few days.
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