art work

I thought that I would try some art work to build some confidence for more complex work in the future.

This design is from the CLC catalog and was very easy to do. It looks much more complex then it is.

striping the cedar deck

I am making good progress striping the cedar deck.

It is not as hard to do as most people think. It is just slow going because you have to wait for the glue to dry between strips.

I spend 30 or 40 minutes cutting, fitting, and gluing strips. Then I have to wait about two hours before doing another row of cedar strip.

I think that more people would use cedar strips for the deck if they knew how easy it is. I think that it is much easyer then stitch and glue plywood.

The strips are glued together with TightBond.

The northern white cedar bends very easy and is very soft. Very easy to work with and is very light. About one fourth the weight of the purple heart.

I made little clamp blocks and some wedges to hold the strips in place until the glue sets.

wood duck kayak

Well I have finally started to build the deck.

The king plank and the shear strips are the dark colored strips. They are made from purple heart.

The light colored strips are made from northern white cedar.


The purple heart is a hardwood that comes from South America. It is not the type of wood you would normally use on a kayak. I wanted a very dark color and could not find any very dark cedar. The purple heart is as hard as a rock and about as flexible as steel. Bending it around a curve was a pain in my ass and the dogs ass too. It is also way to heavy for a kayak. It will probably add two or three pounds to the total weight of the kayak.

If this kayak turns out looking good I might use purple heart again but if not, I will just chalk this up as a lesson learned.

wood duck kayak

Well I built a boat in my basement and had no way to get it out. So I cut a hole in the wall.

I did not get to work on the kayak at all this week. But I did get two big things out of the way.

I worked about five hours designing and building
the second router fixture I needed to put the bead and cove on the deck strips.

And the big job was the window. I spent about twelve hours of very hard work. Mostly digging and moving dirt and rocks. But now I have a way to get kayaks in and out of the basement.

Now with these things out of my way I can get moving on this kayak. It seems like I have spent most of my time making tools or fixtures or jigs and windows, and have not spent any time actually building the kayak itself.

Tomorrow I will work on milling the cove on my deck strips. By this time next week I would like to be well into the construction of the cedar strip deck.

wood duck kayak

Today I installed the temporary forms that will form the cedar strip deck.

When the deck is finished, the forms will be removed. They are held in place with hot glue and should come out easy.

wood duck kayak

This is the router bit for milling the bead on the deck strips. It mills a bead with a 1/8 inch radius.

It also mills a 1/8 inch radius on the tip of your finger if you stick it where it does not belong. At first I did not think it would. But now I am a true believer.

wood duck kayak

This is one of two router fixtures I need to mill the bead and cove on all the deck strips.

This is the one for milling the bead. I still need to design and build the fixture for milling the cove.