Completion

Here's a couple of pics of the finished product, sitting on the driveway on Wednesday evening awaiting launch the following day.

Quick Update

The launch date for the kayak is scheduled for 22nd January, this Thursday afternoon.

My parents arrive for a month long visit from the UK, and I'll launch in the afternoon after I've picked them up from the airport.

The kayak is mostly painted, just some black pinstripes and a couple of areas to be touched up.  The seat is painted, the paddle is varnished and I've made and painted a toggle for the bow line.  Final touches will be some foam rubber mat cable tied to the seat and the forward deck beam (to protect my shins).

I still have top make a trolley to take it the 200m or so to the local boat ramp and beach.  I'll probably end up carrying it because I also have to paint and fit foot grips to some bolt-on sidesteps a friend fabricated for the Land Rover a couple of years ago.

Its going to be tight, but a Thursday launch it is.  

New Year, Same Kayak

Well, that's Christmas and New Year out of the way.

I was really busy getting ready for Christmas, then we went camping for a few nights and got back on New Year's day. I went back to work the following Monday, so tried to spend the weekend doing fun, family stuff rather than sanding.

I finally got around to sanding the first coat of primer and adding a little knifing putty to some of the less well prepared areas (the ones that only show up once its all the same colour). I did a big session of sanding last night and got it close enough. I'm brush painting the top coats so once the minor scratches and edges in the filler are smaller than a brush mark, I don't see the point in spending any more effort getting it better. I will, however, be asking for a random orbital sander for my birthday.





So this evening I put on a second coat of primer. I'll flat it off with a quick rub of 220 grit paper, with a little more attention being payed to a few inevitable runs and drips. It was around 25 degrees Celsius when I was painting in the early evening, and the water based paint was drying as fast as I could brush it out, keeping a wet edge was nigh on impossible.

In the background, between coats, I've also prepped the seat for top-coating, rubbed the paddle down ready for a final coat of varnish, and spray painted some deck hardware in satin black enamel after etch-priming (its all galvanised steel).

A Momentus Occasion

No not the launch, not quite.

I finally got some paint on the hull.  The sanding of the first load of exterior bog was completed last week, and the second fill on the underside was hard enough to sand at the weekend.  I made a start, but was otherwise engaged and so am now a little more behind.

Sunday was spent fixing a couple of things on the Land Rover to get it through the 6-monthly Warrant of Fitness certification that is required in New Zealand.  The relatively straight forward job of changing the power steering belt became an epic due to seized bolts.  The other job I knew had pitfalls associated with it.  I learnt so much in the process of completing the drop arm ball joint fix that I posted my findings here in the hope of my experience being useful to others tackling the same task. 

Anyway, last night I finished sanding the second fill and then I started preparing to paint.  I washed the bottom down with a warm solution of liquid sugar soap to degrease, remove the dust and any amine blush (a waxy emission from cured epoxy), then rinsed with plenty of water and allowed the boat to dry.

I then applied a coat of Taubmans UnderProof Acrylic Primer Undercoat.  This is a water-based acrylic with what smells like an amount of latex added to prevent bleeding through to the top coat.  I'm going to be using Taubmans Living Proof Indoor/Outdoor Acrylic Enamel Gloss as the top coat.  The reasons to use house paint rather than marine enamel like I tried for the cockpit interior are twofold.  Firstly, the marine enamel requires 24 hours between coats, whereas the acrylic enamel requires only an hour or two.  Secondly, the smell of the marine enamel was awful, even with the garage door closed it could be detected on walking passed while the boat dried inside.

Obviously there is a Christmas break coming, and we are off on a family camping trip until after New Year's, so the launch will definitely be in 2009.  I'm also pretty certain it will be in January of that year.

No Longer Without a Paddlle

At the weekend I finally plucked up the courage to cut the flats on the end of the paddle loom.  The profiles don't match exactly and one is cut a little too deep where the ply blade is supposed to come up flush to the loom, but its too late now as the parts are stuck together with waterproof polyurethane builder's glue and its all cleaned up ready for varnish.  Its not the thing of beauty I had in my mind's eye, but should be good enough to ensure forward motion is maintained.  Lets call it the paddle Mk I.

Last night I finished the main fairing compound application to the hull.  I'm now out of epoxy pretty much and have developed a loathing for mixing thick fairing compound; it takes longer to mix than it does to spread over the boat.

So I can spend a couple of short evenings painting the seat and vanishing the paddle.  Then, at the weekend, its out with the power sander and I can turn all that laboriously mixed and applied fairing compound into dust.

Meanwhile, in the Garden...

Here's a little mini-project that I did on Sunday while a load of epoxy was curing on the boat.

We had a few sunflower seedlings that needed to be planted up, but really had nowhere in the garden prepared for them, so they had to go in pots.

We also have a good number of strange, octagonal, terracotta pipes in the basement, 400mm long with a 100mm diameter circular bore.

I closed of the bottom end with a disk of tanalised timber, nailed through 4 holes drilled around the bottom end of each pipe.  I added 10 metres of thick sisal rope and 10 metres of thinner sisal cord and this is what I came up with.  

Sorry for the fuzzy image, it was pitch black on the viewfinder and a bit too dark for the autofocus it would seem.

Coaming Lip

Although I don't have a spray deck, or know how to Eskimo roll, I want to include a lip on the cockpit coaming to hold a spray deck in due course.  If I'm to try and cross the Rangitoto Channel in this home built contraption, then I really don't want to get swamped half way across.

To this end, I made a crown of pins all around the coaming and balances a length of 8mm knitted synthetic rope on this, with the odd extra pin tensioning the rope.  The rope had first been dipped in straight epoxy resin to soak it.

The pins are now removed and I've started the lengthy process of smoothing (or fairing) the outside of the hull in preparation for painting.  There is nothing to add to the kayak now really, just filler and paint.  I need to paint the seat and find some closed cell foam to pad it, and I still haven't got round to making a paddle yet.