My 1st Kayak is finished!!! 4-13-14

Hi Guys,

As you know I have been working on building my first Kayak and I finished it yesterday and today my Friend Evis, his brother Florian, their Uncle and my wife Bianca and the two dogs helped with the launching of the battleship kayak. So nicknamed now because of the high sides, I thought she would have a water line of about 20 cm, but discovered that it barely has a draft of 10cm which is less than 4 inches. Oooppppssssie! for all the gory details open the pdf attachment and it will take you from start to finish.

 

My Kayak is completed 1

 

Okay I know that the shape looks a little more like a canoe than a kayak because of the high sides. The bottom does have a curve from bow to stern so give me that. I hope to incorporate all the things I learned here into my next one that I will be starting on this coming Tuesday or Wednesday so my friend Evis and I will be off to the lakes and rivers of Albania as the season is ready to begin here! Yahoo!

I have posted a few videos to my facebook page if you are interested.

Thanks for stopping by!

See ya at the forge soon!!!

Vince

 

 

Kayak Build 2014

Hi Guys,

Okay it would have been easier to just buy one, but then I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of actually building one. I have wanted to do this for a several years, but truthfully I didn’t have the motivation since I owned a Kayak and in the US they are so available what was the point. Here in Albania it turned out that they are overly expensive and difficult to obtain, so we decided to build.

At the end of today we have about 21 hours of work between the two us into the kayak. My friend Evis was a little nervous about getting into this, but now that we have the keel and side stringers on it actually looks like a kayak now both he and I are very happy. There are a few things that didn’t work out as I planned. Imagine that! I was flabbergasted! hahaha. The bow and stern didn’t work out quite as I intended and I will have to figure another way of making them functional and look pretty when done.  The first one is mine and the second Evis’s so he really gets the benefit of what we learn here and there is a lot that we learned.

Originally I was going to screw and glue the stringers to the frame. The problem is that the plywood which is very nice furniture grade plywood is just at 1/2 inch and that makes it difficult to screw into. The solution …. wire ties and glue. I did use on the first stringers the old Eygptian clamp of twisting some string, but we then remembered that this is the 21st century and we have more options. Evis’s brother mentioned the wire ties when he stopped by early in the day. I had read that online and completely forgot about using them. I was enjoying using the twisting clamp, but they were a little slow with the poly urethane glue. So far they are holding very well.

One very important thing to remember; poly-urethane glue is very difficult to remove once it adheres to your skin. It will turn black and it will be on your hands for a week or so. 🙂 Wear gloves from the on start while using this glue.

 

 

 

 

Darn Poly-urethane Glue!

 

Evis Making adjustment to the frames to fit the stringers

The frames, keel and three side stringers are set.

Me with the skeleton today 3-30-14

Initial frame set up for testing the keel

Keel set in place

Keel laid with bottom side stringer ready to be tied to frames

 

I know it isn’t blacksmithing, but as I said I will not be doing any until I get all this crap out of my shop!!!! :)))  I can’t wait to set sail in a kayak that I actually build. Pretty cool so far.

What my Blacksmith Shop looks like now

 

Thanks for stopping by,

See ya at the Forge! Soon!

Vince

New Forge is in Buttttttt…..

Hi Guys,

  I have my new hood in place over my forge and had it fired up the other day. I think in order to weld properly in it given the temps off the charcoal I have I will need to have a deeper pot. I will make a square to go around to contain and raise the heat column. For heating the 2-1/2 deep pot works just fine for heating and beating the smaller work that I do most of the time here. So that will work out. The dust blower works fine for that sort of work and will save me lots of charcoal. I do have a hair dryer hookup for additional and constant air flow to make welding operations easier. I am sure welding will be as easy as using my favorite coke in no time with a little practice with my new setup. Because the guy who was going to build my hood got sick I decided to build it myself. I didn’t really have the work bench to do that size project and that is why the tabs are on the outside and not inside. Plus I really didn’t want to buy a pop rivet gun as I don’t plan on doing anymore sheet-metal work after this. That is the plan anyway. So here a  few shots of the forge hood and forge in operation.

Hood Side cutout

Forge and with new hood warming up

New forge testing the full draft.

Before I decided to make my own hood I started to build my bedroom bench and will be using some re-bar for most of it. Re-bar is popular here. I also have made a couple of re-bar tools such as the drift chisel I used to make the first set of eyes in the legs of the bench. I did round up the holes with a drift that goes up to about a ½ inch. The eyes here are about the same diameter as the legs a little under ½ inch. Everything here is in metric and I haven’t quite assimilated completely yet. I still have to convert everything to visualize the diameters and lengths. This project was put in the holding pattern while I finished the hood.

Bench Legs

This project is on hold for a few weeks as my friend Evis and I built a couple of kayaks. Kayaks are not readily available without costing an arm and a leg. The materials just to build one is still about $350, to buy one here is about $1300 and that is used and not in good shape. So the decision to build one was made.

Here are a couple of shots taken today (3-23-1014) early in the day. The goal was to set up the strongback and get the frames cut out. We accomplished that and only need to redo one that for some reason or other doesn’t line up with the others. No problem, that is why we are going slow and double checking everything. So far it looks good. We are waiting on an epoxy glue that we had to order and after that arrives we will do a test fit and set the keel. Things will really be off and running then.

Kayak Plan w-corrections

Okay I am ready to start Vince – Do you know what you are doing?

I don’t know what I have gotten myself into here

  I know it isn’t blacksmithing, but since I won’t be doing any blacksmithing while this is going on I hope you find it interesting. We won’t know if we are successful or not until we set sail in the water. Evis says he swims really good. Hahaha.

See ya at the Forge!!