Some progress

After site preparation and studying of the plans and various books/websites on stitch and glue kayaks, the marine ply finally arrived from TO. For those who don't know, my driveway is steep and in winter, quite treacherous!  The courier tried to deliver but balked!! I decided to pick the stuff up myself at the depot. No biggie because I have a rack on my car. Lot's of tie downs. Should be a piece of cake. BUT. Winds were whipping around 80-100 km on Friday!! I had a VERY stressful but uneventful trip home. Kudos to Noah's Marine in TO.  Those sheets were packed in cardboard that was thicker than the plywood itself. 388.00 all in for 4 sheets of 4mm Okoume plywood was fine by me!!

Friday night I had all rough panels cuts and the bottom panels joined. Not bad for 2.5 hours work. Pretty dusty though!! I bought a new plywood cuttin' blade for the circular and went mad. Very clean cuts. Not bad for an 8.00 Black and Decker blade from Wally Mart. The image below was taken just after cutting the panels. The air "looked" clear until I took this picture. The flash bounced off the dust in the air and I now have a greater appreciation of the dangers of wood working. Will it change my work habits - cough cough - probably not. Dumb ass!!

Having cut the 8' panels, they must be joined to make longer panels - d'uh!  Like most people, I have useless gym equipment, i.e., that which was bought with great intentions but never realized!!  I have (had) a workout station with all kinds of plastic coated weights just dieing to be used. So I used them . . .

to hold down butt joins and . . .

to hold down a batten.

Which brings me to very important point!!  The Point Bennett, as designed by Duane Strosaker, does not come with full size templates! NO. Duane provides you with a table of offsets from which you must construct the beautiful lines of this craft. I was measuring in units of 1/32s - which I have never done before. Once I plotted the points on your plywood, I used my 20' clear pine batten (see above) to fair in the lines. After finding one point that was out (I measured wrong) - the whole thing fell in place beautifully!!! Thank you Duane!!  Also note the gratuitous use of the weights!!

Many books will suggest that you use a jig saw to cut the panels. I hate using jig saws for close work so I opted for a hand saw  - like this:

 It took about 30 minutes per 16' cut but it was a very controlled cut. Not once did I feel like the saw was getting away from me - which can happen if you let your concentration lapse for just a second with a jig saw!!

Here's a shot of me working away (Notice the ravaged gym equipment behind me)

Here's another great little saw I bought a while back to make paddles.

One book I have says to space the wire stitches at 6" centres and 1/4" from the edge. To speed things up. I made a jig.

In the image below, you can see the bottom panels laid out in full. You can also see the "inside snow", a.k.a. dust, as well as the "outside snow" a.k.a. snow!!

As a side note, pudding cups make great "small shot" containers for epoxy!  

And on that note - I'm tired and off to bed. Hope to do the side panels tomorrow!!