If n' When II -- Tools & Strips

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My plan for a touring boat was to build a stitch and glue boat such as the Artic Tern or Coho and then progress on to a stripper. Plans changed when we decided to move off the residential lake into a new home. This resulted in a much nicer place to build the boat, but lost a project year in the process. As a result, I decided to skip the stitch and glue step and jump directly to strip built boats.

After looking at the specifications for lots of boats, I decided to build the Redfish Return as my first wood boat because the boat can easily support multi-week trips to Baja, Lake Powell, and destinations further afield. A return to the Northwest for R2K1 confirmed my choice. This boat was completed in February, 2002.

The boat became an excuse to replace many of the woodworking tools that I sold years ago. Obviously, I needed to mill my own strips - how else could I justify a new tablesaw?? The boat also became a trip down memory lane as I dug out and sharpened a block plane and a jack plane that had been my grandfather's. Locating cedar in Phoenix was more of a challenge than I expected, and the quality left a lot to be desired. Next time (yup, I'm already planning for boat #2) I'll likely buy the wood in the Northwest and ship it south.

While most people don't seem to name their boats, especially before they build them, I couldn't resist the urge. The original "If 'n When" is a boat that never saw water to the best of my knowledge. The boat belonged to my Grandfather, who I believe purchased it as a partly finished project. I recently got a picture of it complete with a note on the back in Grandmother's handwriting. I still have a vivid memory of it sitting on a four wheel trailer built from a WWII surplus bomb cart and covered by a tarp in a shed on the farm. It was about 20' long and had a six cylinder Grey Marine engine that took up most of the room in the small cramped cabin. To a child's eye, it seemed like it was nearly ready to launch, with a varnished transom neatly lettered with the name. All I recall it missing was the cover over the engine. When Grandfather died, no one seemed to want to deal with it, so it remained in the shed at least twenty years until the farm was sold. My boat will see water in a much shorter time period.

This boat is scheduled a little out of sequence compared to most kayak projects. I've tried to make progress on it while the weather was too hot to work outside on landscaping projects. While most builders are working on their boats during the winter, I'll be out trying to finish the back yard and stealing a bit of time here and there to continue progress on the boat.

I'm fortunate to have a 16' by 28' bay in a fully insulated garage with 9' high overhead doors on both ends that can be a dedicated workspace. A swamp cooler and a big jug of ice water keep it comfortable. Before next summer rolls around, I'll get the swamp cooler mounted outside where it belongs, but for now, it does the trick.

The first moves toward boat construction started in late July, 2001 when I began tracing the large station outlines onto tissue paper. Any of the stations that would fit onto 11x17 paper were zeroxed. Once all the stations were traced, the paper patterns were glued to 1/2 inch plywood using 3M spray adhesive. I cut them out proud of the line using a sabre saw. Using a small belt sander clamped in the ShopMate as a stationary belt sander, all the forms were sanded down to the lines and checked for fair edges. The uprights for the strong back were cut out on the table saw about the same time, and all the holes were drilled in both the uprights and the station forms.

Cutting my own strips was not difficult, but was a little time consuming. The only cedar I was able to locate in Phoenix was quite nice for trim lumber that was going to be painted, but was marginal for this application. I was able to locate some 12' 1x8's at a price I was willing to pay... in retrospect I should have paid twice as much for better lumber -- instead I ended up with lots of waste, splices, and experience! I did cut all the strips by myself after setting up 8' long infeed and outfeed tables on the saw. This setup worked out quite well. I used a Freud thin kerf carbide tip 7.25 inch blade since it seemed to have the thinnest kerf of any blade readily available. I did not use a splitter or finger boards on the saw since they obstructed my view of the blade. I did fabricate a zero clearance insert and added a oak face on the fence to provide a longer fence on the saw.

I fabricated a "miter box" for cutting splices, and spliced 5 sets of strips before cutting beads and coves on them. These strips were intended to be the first 2-3 strips on both the hull and the deck. This worked out fairly well, although my deck design is changing and I doubt that I'll use the resulting long strips that I have set aside for the deck shear strips. I continued to use this jig for cutting splices as I stripped the sides of the hull with good success.

The cove and bead were cut separately. I set up the router in a homemade router table, leveraged the infeed and outfeed tables that I'd used with the saw, and clamped finger boards in place. I fabricated a vacuum hood from plexiglas that did a great job of controlling all the wood chips. Once all the beads were cut, I switched cutters and cut all the coves. Unfortunately, I cut beads and coves on all the strips, some of which I've since needed to cut off. Next time I'll hold out 15% without coves and beads.

I got to this point before going to the R2K1 Rendezvous in Port Townsend, Washington. This Rendezvous was hosted by Joe Greenley of Redfish Kayaks which gave me an opportunity to meet the originator of the design that I'm building. Wandering up and down the lineup of kayaks helped me decide some of the details, features, and graphic design that I would like to include in this boat.