Writing from Port Townsend, WA.
We took the Edmonds ferry to Kingston, then crossed the Hood Canal Bridge to Port Townsend. That Sunday evening, we had a glass of wine at the Port Townsend Winery Vintage tasting room and dinner at Alchemy Bistro. PT was quiet. About all there was to do was walk around town.
On Monday morning, I went to my class at the Northwest Maritime Center. There were seven of us assembled to build Chesapeake Lightcraft (CLC) kayaks. Mine is a Shearwater Sport, about 16 feet long and well balanced between performance and comfort (broader beam for stability). We each started with a pile of precut plywood parts, directions, and miscellaneous other bits (copper wire, epoxy, fiberglass sheeting, a few screws, and some shock cord). Joel is our instructor. We are doing the work and Joel comes in when we get stuck. We do not get stuck often, but is has proven key that Joel came in with techniques and tips to keep us moving forward.
The first day was mostly woodworking. Although the wood parts are precut, the wood does not meet at convenient right angles on the boat, so we spend a lot of time beveling the edges to mate. A small block plane and sandpaper do the trick, but remember there is a lot of edge on a multichined 16-foot boat. The pieces are cut from 4x8-foot sheets of plywood, so the longer pieces are formed by gluing shorter bits together. Joel helped by doing that initial gluing on Sunday so that the epoxy was cured and ready for us to sand on Monday. So one can say that Day One is a dusty day. At the end of the day, the projects do not look like much and there is little obvious change from the start of the day.
Day Two is spent with a lot of little copper wires. The edges ofrhe appropriate pieces of the bottom hull are joined together with hundreds of little copper wires to create the basic shape over some temporary forms and bulkheads. The bulkheads will layer serve to create water tight storage compartments but their initial purpose is to set the shape of the hull. The CNC machine has drilled hundreds of little holes along the edges of the boards. These line up such that the hull pieces can be wired together with “twist ties” to create the correct nautical shape. This is not easy. To join the hull pieces, a simple U-shape works, but to tie in the forms and bulkheads requires some serious distortion of the wire. And all these wires are twisted by hand to bring in the alignment and shape, the further twisted with pliers to set the final shape. I broke a dozen or more wires in the process of adjustment, probably two dozen. Each broken wire was removed and replaced. My fingers were sore at the end.then we repeated this for the top, the deck of the kayak. Finally, we “dry fit” the two to see the shape of the kayak. It took a lot more adjustment to get top and bottom to align, but it was a very satisfying day when we saw the reality of the emerging boat.
Day Three, today, was mostly a day of chemistry and yet more adjustments. We took the boat halves apart and started to apply the first “tacks” of epoxy along the seems. This is to prepare the full structure so that we can later remove the copper wires that were so lovingly fit and tweaked. A light bead of thickened epoxy is laid along each seam of the bottom, skipping over the copper “staples”. Further thickened epoxy is thickly applied, a”filet”, at the bow and stern because they are subjected to greater stresses than the rest of the seams. The top is put on the bottom to check the fit, and the boat is wrapped or taped to set the shape white the epoxy takes an initial set. After lunch, we took the top off again, and did the filet w work on the seams of the top. Then we wired, wrapped, and taped the top and bottom to set overnight to let the epoxy carefully. As we had sometime left, a few of up glued up the support structures for the hatches. We will cut the hatches tomorrow after the epoxy filets and tacks have had a chance to cure.
Tomorrow, Day Four, is more chemistry. We remove the wires to apply filets of fortified epoxy. I expect we will also cut the deck hatches.
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