Team

The build-a-Night_heron in 10 days mission is on schedule with yesterday's whirlwind marking out of the panels. One thing we learned was the ineffectiveness of using spray adhesives. The panel cuts will need to be precise so we opted to lay the long ply sheets out, tape out the patterns tight with tiny strips of blue Scotch brang tape and then use scribes from my Starret squares (hardened steel fine-point scribes with a round steeel knob at the ends for comfort), to make a series of holes through the pattern into the plywood. This seems like a lot of work but the focus is precision layout. This also gave us time to orientate the patterns to maximize the wood savings. Also, we amanged to avoid a scarf joint for the deck side piece and put the main deck pieces in such a position as to make a minimal scarf joint exposure at the bow. I also redisgned the rear hatch cut-out to make a smaller version of the coackpit cutout in order to make a symmetrical, sensual flow, and to maximize the rear hatch to take a heavy sleeping bag. For the rear deck lay-out, we placed the pattern in such a position as that the rear hatch cut-out is on the scarf joint. We'll cut a new rear hatch out of plywood and discard the cutout, thus leaving the only scarf joint on the rear deck being 1.2 inches long on both sides. Lay-out was done by pin-dotting the patterns and stitch hole locations, then "cvonnect-the -dots" using a thin plastic straight edge and ball point pens. One makes a line and wipes the pen tip on a paper towel to avoid ink build-up and smears. All layouts took a few hours but are exactly on or at least look like they are. Also, we cleaned up all glue squeeze out at the scraf joints.
Today it's going to be a lot of jigsaw time to cut out the patterns and drill the stitch holes. We're going to switch to 22-24 gauge steel wire (if we can find it) instead of 18 gauge copper to reduce the stitch hole size.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, Nick's plans surely made it easy to make this kayak. Nick was kind enough to send a second set of the patterns as reference copies which helped to look at while "connecting the dots"
Hopefully Sage will drop by today to see how it's going and I can get Dave and Sage connected, both being Night Heron owners. Sage has a sexy stripper version that is a pure joy to watch slicing through the water on paddles.

I'm off to spend the day with the jig saw.