Hi All,

I have been having fun preparing what I can in for the building of one of Nick's beautiful Guillemot kayaks in the spring. At 15 degrees below Zero Fahrenheit it is a "bit fresh" to be working in an unheated garage at the moment :-(

Just wanted to share a couple of things that may benefit others in this stage of building.

I will be building my Guillemot from regular spruce lumber and red cedar decking. I found some very good quality spruce and cedar at the Home Depot. Four 2x6" x 10' of spruce and two 2x4" x 8' cedar have yielded enough 3/16" strips for a kayak with a reasonable margin. Cost of materials - about $40.00 CNDN.

A bit of lumber mill etiquette: When searching for that perfect board, be sure to leave the pile of lumber as neat [or neater] than you found it and don't interfere with other customers - that way when you return for more wood you will be welcome. Kayaks strips and paddles require the "best of the best" materials - don't loose the PRIVILEDGE to search for it.

Ripping the strips went well. The Freud, 24 tooth, thin kerf, 7 1/4" blade that was recommended from Home Depot leaves a very smooth surface. The feed rates on a 1 1/2" thickness of cut are good and the blade runs cool.

I made a set of in-feed/out-feed extensions for the table saw from 9/16"x12" x8' white particle board shelves with 2x2" x8' spruce mounted on each side as guides/stiffeners. Having good support for the long pieces of wood made cutting them much easier. A bit of furniture spray wax [Pledge] gives a nice slick surface. Thinking back over the times I have struggled with long cuts makes me wonder why it took me so long to get around to making these extensions.

I made several feather boards and found them useful for cutting the perfectly flat wood - should be great when routing the beads & coves. The wood that had a bit of a twist was cut without the feather boards by keeping the cut surface tight to the fence by hand. The free hand cutting went well and eliminated to reset feather boards for each time.

Paul's suggestion to rip the 2x6 into 2x3s was very helpful as was his suggestion to flip the board end for end every couple of cuts. The narrower pieces were lighter and easier to keep in contact with the fence. Flipping the wood helped to cancel any cutting inaccuracies I introduced. Wedges were also very useful - I had made half a dozen and they were great for keeping the kerf open when ripping the 2x3's. Cutting the strips didn't require the wedges - the kerf opened buy itself (once I had fixed my fences). I set my fence to a bit over 3/16" to give me a bit of a tolerance until I get some more experience/confidence in milling consistent thickness strips. They turned out OK actually.

I played around with various fence setups for ripping and settled on a 18" spacer mounded on the saw fence just forward the blade. The wood was not perfectly straight to start and as strips were removed, the stresses in the wood caused more "bowing". With the bowed wood, the in-feed fence caused problems with guiding and the out-feed fence interfered with the kerf opening up and caused the back edge of the saw blade to score the strips - I adjusted both of them so that they did not touch the wood any more. It was very easy to keep the wood in tight contact the short fence on the saw although the last inch or so of the cut was unguided and a bit tricky. I set the blade to minimum height and used push sticks. Gotta use caution working that close to the blade!

Next operation: Bead & Cove the strips.

As always, suggestions, comments and questions are welcome.

Hope this is of interest.

Hank