Building an Outer Island

Setup

The first thing I discovered when embarking on this project is that there is a lot of setup work that needs be done. It seemed that I spent hours building and constructing things that would not be part of the completed boat.

When I built my last kayak I bought a "kit" which had almost all of the wood pre-cut and required very little actual woodwork. This time I decided to work only from a set of plans. A cedar strip kayak is essentially constructed using 3/4" by 1/4" wood strips of varying lengths glued together over a set forms. Then, after lots of sanding, the deck and hull are fiberglassed inside and out and attached to each other. A cockpit is constructed, outfitting added, and several coats of varnish completes the boat.

The first choice I needed to make was whether to buy pre-cut strips or mill my own. I chose the latter. It's a bit more work but it gave me more choice on color and quality of lumber. Fortunately I was able to find a local source for western red cedar and clear pine. Unfortunately, that meant that I would need a table saw.

Here is my new table saw

The first thing I did was build a few jigs for the tablesaw and my router table, and some roller stands for feeding the lumber into each.

Next, I cut out the drawings for the forms, glued them onto 1/2" plywood and cut out each of the forms with a jig saw. Then I had to set the forms aside until I could build a strongback. The strongback was constructed out of plywood. It consisted of two 5" by 5" boxes that are six feet long with a 4"x4" box that slides inside so that the length could be adjusted. The strongback can be used again, for building another kayak or canoe.

Picture of strongback with first four forms attached

After all of the forms were attached to the strongback they needed to be centered and adjusted such that they were equidistant to each other. Once this was done I was ready to start stripping the hull. Click on the Building the Hull link to continue.

Building an Outer Island Kayak