My good friend, Shane, and I began building the West River 180 kayak from Chesapeake Light Craft in September 1999. It's constructed from 4mm mahogany plywood. This 18' kayak is a multi-chine design made for racing and touring (lots of gear space). It's a bit longer than the average sea kayak, but that means it's faster. CLC has kits available, but we chose to cut the wood and do all the fun stuff ourselves. It was completed in May 2000. This site is intended to not only show off, but also to assist other builders with their kayaks.
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Marking the workspace (not that exciting).
That's Shane's kayak next to it.
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Sanding the scarf joints (scarfing joints is the process of gluing two boards together by sanding beveled edges to make angles (so they fit nice and snug))
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After marking the strips and cutting them out, we 'stitched' them together with copper wire
every 6 inches - this is only the hull (the bottom) of the kayak.
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Now those stitches need to be tightened (twisted) to form the actual shape of the hull.
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The bulkheads (the two sections in the middle) help keep the shape of the
hull and will eventually separate the storage areas from where you sit.
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Another shot.
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Now the gluing of the strips, made from epoxy resin and a hardener. Epoxy is actually a clear liquid. The reason it's brown is because we mixed in mahogany sawdust (from Shane's boat scraps) to help strengthen the joints. It won't be that ugly in the end.
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As you can see, Shane has a wide variety and number of clamps that he is showing off for us. The clamps are holding a small strip of cedar to the top of the hull. This piece will eventually be the spot where we glue the top to the hull.
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