the plan in this video is to build two cedar strip kayaks in around two weeks the design is the petrol play from guillemot kayaks it's a stunning looking vessel and it's going to be a challenge to build them in such a short time the first thing to do is cut all the strips from these australian red cedar boards and red cedar timber is no longer produced and difficult to find i found these old boards from Mooloo Timbers and Darcy was super helpful finding exactly what i needed and we were very lucky that all the boards are full length there's over two thousand feet of strips to prepare so i've got some help off bradley i won't be building the kayaks on my own and some of you may remember Corin from the kumiko gates we built last year he'll be arriving soon and we're making a kayak each i'm trying to get the strips prepared so we can get straight onto building when he gets here now that the strips are cut i need to route a cove down one edge and a bead down the other this joint will allow the strips to conform to the shape of the kayak and make the build a little easier i'm running a bead on one edge first and then i'm flipping the strips 180 degrees and then cutting the coves and in the process i'm mixing up the strips to make them random and switching some of them end for end that was a fair amount of work but they're all done and it was a big saving to mill them myself for two kayaks it would have cost over 3000 Australian dollars for pre-prepared strips and these boards cost under 700 we bought the full-size plants to work off and Corin has arrived too so we'll start making the forms we'll stick the templates onto half inch plywood and cut them out with the jigsaw and bandsaw my hope of this video is to inspire anyone who fancies tackling this project to give it a go i'm trying to be fairly thorough but there's far too much information to fit into one video so if you do want more info then check out nick's videos he has a 23 part series of this kayak and it's what we used alongside his books for this build i'm staying slightly away from the line and then we'll sand up to that and refine them they need a rectangle removing out of the center so the forms can be mounted onto a strong back which in our case will be a piece of aluminium box section i'll cut them roughly with a jigsaw then clean them up with a template and a pattern following bit on the router table they need to be a little oversized to allow for adjustment so they don't need to be super precise the plans allow to build one kayak from a set of plans but nick from guillemot kayaks kindly gave us the go ahead to make two off camera we knocked together these simple saw horses which we'll modify as we go the end forms at the bow and the stern slide onto the box section then a piece of wood either side keeps them centered we made these spacers off-camera to keep the forms the correct distance apart with the center one being a little different this one is in two pieces which is driven apart with wedges and locking all the forms and spaces together next we made adjustments and aligned them all using the sight lines on each form it was a little trial and error but not too difficult it's probably not necessary but a bit of hot glue can't hurt and keep them in the right position that's the forms and the strong back done so next we can make the first part of the actual kayak and that's the inner stems these will be taped to the end forms and when we start fitting the strips to the forms the strips will get glued directly to these inner stems as they're positioned at the pointy ends of the kayak they need a bevel planing onto them while i'm making mine corin is making his and he's decided to do those on the belt grinder next i'll continue the bevel onto the end forms now they're done we can start installing the strips but first we'll put some packing tape onto the
forms so the strips don't stick to them i'm set up in the wood workshop and Corin is set up in the other side in the metal workshop we'll work together to begin with to find our feet and then we'll start working on our own kayaks the first strips have to be bent into shape at the bow and the stern and to help with the bend we're planing a taper about four feet onto each end and i'm planing four strips together to make it easier and that's two strips for each kayak the first strip goes along the shear line where the deck meets the hull and we've got it upside down and we're starting on the hull we're hot gluing the strips to the forms on anywhere the hot glue struggles a little we've decided to brad nail those we're nailing through a thin strip which can be easily removed leaving the head of the nail exposed making that easy to remove too and as i mentioned earlier the strip gets glued with regular wood glue to the inner stem the next strip gets glued to the shear line strip but only in the middle it's then allowed to wrap around the forms where it wants to sit comfortably without being manipulated the space left gets filled out with cheater strips a taper needs planing on one end of the strips and i'll mark that in place once the taper has been established and i've done a test fit it then needs to be planing onto the taper and that's to fit into the cove of the shear line strip it takes a couple of times to get it right but it's actually a pretty easy process and doesn't take too long at all the first one does take the longest then each taper gets shorter and it gets quicker i'm filming my progress as i go but corin is making great progress too on his in the next room and because he isn't filming he's getting ahead and he's going great i've completed all the cheaters so i can start adding some full length strips up the sides i'm installing a strip on one side and then while the glue is setting i'll fit one to the other and then i can go back to the previous one and remove the tape and continue on as so an easier way to strip a kayak is to staple the strips but then you have to live with the holes i'm trying to avoid that but if the strip does need some manipulation to conform to the forms mainly at the bow and the stern then i'm happy to use the odd brad nail now the sides are done and the next strip won't go around the chines with a cove and bead it's asking too much of the joint so instead the next strip needs fitting to the last one and i'll start by cutting the last side strip down with the pull saw to help mark a line on the outside of the hull i need to transfer this line on the forms over to the outside and i can easily do that with this simple jig i'm cutting slightly away from the line and i'll plane down to it with a cool new tool that i've just bought which is a side rabbet plane as well as planing down to the line it also needs a bevel to join the next strip and the angle of the bevel is marked on each form and changes from form to form making a rolling bevel it sounds difficult but it really isn't with an adjustment here and there it's done in no time now i can fit the next strip and off camera i cut the bead off on the table saw and using a block plane i can match the bevel from the previous strip it's probably time to check in with Corin and see his progress he's not a woodworker but he's going great and he's enjoying it and we thought we'd take a moment for him to tell you a little bit more about himself my name is Corin Urquhart i am a maker from sydney i make all sorts of things and in one of the things that i'm most known for is barrel knives barrel knives are not a common type of knife or these examples on the left are all over 100 years old they work by depressing a clip on the back of the knife here the inner slides out we open it up and it goes back together again like so and of course the knife can't close on your hand or on your fingers and they were very popular also known as immigrants knives or click knives and all over 100 years old typically these ones here are ones that i've made so they have all damascus fittings sterling silver ferrules and a nice click which is most satisfying and another one here and that's what i do if anyone has any interest or questions about the barrel knives then be sure to get in touch with him he would be very happy to hear from you i'll put his instagram on the screen and links in the description anyway back to the kayaks and Corin has just about closed the hull in not bad for someone who felt out of his depth as a woodworker we'll leave Corin to get on with his kayak and continue with mine and next i'll add two keel strips right along the center they need a matching bevel planed on one of the edges and in the middle of the strips the bevel is next to nothing but at the bow and the stern it really gets into a fair angle i'm holding the strip at the approximate angle it needs to be with the plane upright i can fairly accurately plane to the correct bevel once those fit together i need to taper the ends to fit the last strip that looks pretty good so next i'll do the other end i'll glue the strips together and i should mention they both have a cove facing outwards then i'll hot glue one side down to the forms for now and then tape them together the next strips are like the cheater strips that i fitted to the sides of the hull earlier but these ones have a taper on each end and that makes it a bit trickier as the strip has to be the perfect length but with careful adjustment and dry fitting it isn't too difficult i'm alternating each strip i fit one along the center line and then the next one towards the side of the hull and that way the tapers has become stepped leaving an interesting pattern the bottom can be stripped in many different ways and corin did his differently he ran them all against the sides and then jointed the tapers along the center line i haven't shown it but the second last strip which is already installed has had the cove planed off that allows me to slot the last piece down into the recess once i've shaped it to fit that's fitting well and here's the last piece of the hull going in i'm really happy with how that's gone so let's check in with corin and see where he's up to he's flipped it over and he's already started the deck and also at this point we've had a change of plan for the whole build in the video it's taken longer than we'd expected and Corin can only be here for so long we planned for two weeks or so but we're not going to get them finished in that time so we're going to put mine aside for now and we'll both work on corins and we'll set that up in the woodworking side of the workshop the only thing Corin's done different so far is to cut some silky oak and some white mahogany strips to make the design of the deck also i should mention that the first strip of the deck isn't glued to the shear line strip on the hull as the deck and the hull need to be separated at that joint later on to remove the forms stripping the deck is pretty straightforward now that we've done the hull it's just making tapers and fitting a strip at a time that's the silky oak and the white mahogany strips done so next we need to fill in the gaps all with straight pieces working from the center line these ones are pretty easy as they only have a taper on the one end and they can be left long the other end ready to be trimmed for where the cockpit will be i reckon the deck looks fantastic and Corin's design really worked out that's the stripping done and i really enjoyed that part of the project next we'll scrape the deck with card scrapers taking off the corners and any high spots the scraping gets it so far but next will sand it and klingspor has provided us with a heap of discs to try out on this project so a big thanks to them i love the discs and they were awesome on my new sander that i just treated myself to that's the deck done next we'll scrape and sand the hull we're making good progress now working together on the kayak i just need to figure out how to make an interesting
video of finishing my kayak and by the way i'm thinking of adding kumiko but i haven't quite decided yet and still thinking about it that looks pretty neat next we need to start the cockpit and for that i need to cut some veneers from silky oak i'll sand and glue them to a piece of plywood and from that we can cut out the cockpit we need two boards like this i'm just showing the one here but we are making a second one i was hoping to fit it in my vacuum bag but it was just too big so weights will have to do it's far too big to fit through the thicknesser but those Klingspor mesh discs sanded it down in no time at all even though i haven't shown the second piece that one fits around the outside of this piece with a puzzle joint to lock them together corin is refining them on the belt grinder and here you can see that second piece while we were working at fitting the cockpit pieces together we had a visitor in the workshop after a bit of tinkering they're ready to fit and fix together and we'll do that with spots of ca glue and sprayed with accelerator we'll start by locking the joints together first gluing them from the back and then start fixing the pieces together around the edge it was a bit of a wrestle as i think the veneer was left a bit too thick it was also very dry and it cracked in a few places but nothing that we couldn't fix up with a bit of glue next we're marking out a recess and that's for the plywood cockpit to fit into it's getting late in the day and to get the kayak finished in our time frame we need to get some fiberglassing started today so we'll put the deck aside until the morning and start fiberglassing the hull neither of us have done any fiberglassing before so this is going to be interesting so fingers crossed it works out i think that it's actually fairly straightforward just lay out the cloth carefully as it snags easily and then wet it out evenly we didn't have any disasters and we're fairly happy with it but we also learned from it and reckon we didn't saturate the cloth quite as well as we should have it's not too bad though when it tacked off we added a fill coat by spreading the resin with a spatula and that's something else we realized we should have done differently and we should have applied that with a brush the hull will get another coat later on though it was a long day and a late finish and it wasn't the only one on this project the next morning we removed it from the forms we checked it out and it looked pretty good and then after that we trimmed off all the excess glass next we put the hull back in the metal workshop and i started scraping it while i was doing that Corin started fitting the cockpit we'll follow my progress for now but we will get back to what Corin's doing later on we could take the sanding further but with our time constraints we need to draw the line somewhere so that we'll have to do next we'll fiberglass the inside of the hull but first the chines on the inner stems need reinforcing and we'll do that with a fillet of epoxy mixed with sawdust the fillet gets an extra strip of fiberglass and then we'll roll out some cloth and fiberglass the inside of the hull there's some bridging on the inside of the chines but that's an easy enough fix by giving it a bit more cloth Corin gave it a heavy fill coat off camera and we clean the edges up a bit but they'll need more when we eventually fit the deck and the hole back together now we can get back to fitting the cockpit and Corin is roughly fitting it into the recess he's leaving a little room to fit a couple of accent strips when they're fitted we can then refine the outside of the cockpit to fit into the recess off camera we cut a thin strip of white mahogany and a thin strip of silky oak on the table saw and Corin is gluing them in one at a time around the inside of the recess this should be a nice detail and tie in with the rest of the design now we can refine the fit by taking off a little here and there where needed we ended up a touch too short at the back so we decided to fill that with a thin piece of white mahogany which we glued in off-camera the cockpit gets glued in using ca glue with accelerator for an instant bond and this will hold it in place until the deck gets fibreglassed the cockpit isn't perfect but it's sanded up well and it looks great now the deck is starting to come together next we'll fiberglass the outside of the deck the resin really brings out the grain and the design and i reckon it's starting to look pretty awesome once the resin had tacked off i brushed on a fill coat and it really started to look amazing the cockpit isn't finished yet we still need to add the coaming which is a raised border that keeps out water we'll clean up the inside edge and that's to get it ready to glue short strips of red cedar to the strips get glued together with regular glue using the cove and bead and glued to the inside edge of the cockpit using hot glue the hot glue is just to keep it in place until the coaming gets fiberglassed after it's sanded smooth we'll make a laminated rim which we'll form around the coaming we'll need to remove it to clean it up so we'll cover the coaming with packing tape first the strips are made of blackbutt which again i cut on the table saw off-camera the strips only go so far around for now but we'll deal with the front section separately we then added another strip of silky oak just to finish off the edge next i cleaned up one of the faces with a block plane and then ran it through the table saw to clean up the opposite face and to keep a consistent thickness my mini roundover plane that you may remember from a past video did a great job of putting a small radius around the edge while i was doing that Corin scraped the inside of the deck and then i helped to give it a quick sand the rim is ready to position with the clamps and then we'll glue it in place with ca glue and we'll put a spot about every inch or so after trimming off the ends we'll make the front section from the same blackbutt strips this time to glue the strips we're using thin ca glue with accelerator and the thin glue will run down between the strips and hold them together that's half the strip so we need to do that again and it just needs a strip of silky oak to finish it off it looks a little messy but it should stand up fine that's the coaming finish now we need to fiberglass it but first it needs a fillet of resin mixed with sawdust the fiberglass around the coaming is a bit tricky but it's not too difficult with a bit of patience and a bent acid brush we managed and did a decent job once it was tacked off we trimmed up the fiberglass for a neat edge and flipped the deck over and fiberglassed the inside next we need to varnish the inside of the hull and the deck and this will give the epoxy some added protection and fill any pin holes that may still be there we're using a water-based marine varnish which will dry fast and keep the project moving along next we need to join the deck and the hull together with fiberglass strips but first we need to mask up the insides leaving an exposed section for the fiberglass strips to stick to we were quite shocked to find that the deck and the hull don't match up but apparently this is very normal which can be caused by quite a few different factors anyway we just need to wrestle it into shape we're spreading the sides of the hull out and then we'll use reinforced packing tape to pull the edges of the deck down and into position some straps and a paint scraper are also handy to line things up once they're in position the friction of the edges pulled together with the tape are enough to hold everything in place after taping the outside to stop resin from leaking through the joint from the inside we positioned the kayak on its side ready to join them together we cut a tape off a roll of cloth which we realized after starting would have been easier with a proper roll of fiberglass the edges are frayed and they easily catch back on themselves after applying resin Corin rolled it up and began to join the kayak together he needs to get inside the kayak and roll out the strip by steering it with a brush on a stick it looked pretty awkward and i still have this to come when i finish mine but Corin managed very well next morning we started preparing the bow and the stern for outer stems and to give the inside of the deck and the hull joint a bit longer to set before removing all the tape here i'm cutting thin white mahogany strips to laminate the outer stems while they're setting up we felt confident enough to remove the tape from the outside of the joint next we shape the outer stems to the hull and corin worked on the one end while i worked on the other they didn't take too long to do and we took the kayak outside to prepare the external deck and hull joint and also to prepare for some reinforced strips of fiberglass either end of the keel the reinforcement strips went well next we did the outer seam which was also pretty straightforward we are rushing things a little as we're running out of time but it's still going very well now i'm brushing a fill coat onto the whole kayak doing the hull first and then leaving it for a few hours and then flipping it over to fill coat the deck one part of the process that we didn't film and we did when we had the opportunity was to stand the kayak upright and pour a cup of epoxy into each end just to strengthen them we're getting towards the end and now we need to sand the epoxy back smooth going through the grits to leave a good finish for the varnish we realized that we didn't feather out the fiberglass seams with the sander quite enough before the fill coat so off camera we gave the seams and the hull another
fill coat which put the project back one more day we then sanded it again finishing with wet sanding and then started to apply the varnish the varnish is a must especially on the outside as the epoxy isn't uv stable and it will yellow and the varnish just gives it that extra protection all round and it finishes it off well the water-based varnish was great it's easy to apply and we've built up the coats quickly with the whole kayak getting three coats it looks fantastic and we're both super happy with it we did cut corners a little but it's still a very good finish and we're both very proud of it here's a few final shots in the last light of the day in the morning we'll take it for a paddle and then Corin will head home it still needs a seat which Corin will sort out himself later on but for this morning he'll just be a bit uncomfortable the varnish is barely dry but anyway here it is on its maiden voyage it's a shame i didn't get mine done to join corin but i did go for a paddle but just in a different kayak it looked awesome on the water and Corin pretty much had a smile on his face the whole time and i should mention that Corin is an experienced kayaker unlike myself but i can't wait to finish mine and give it a go too let me know what you think about another video finishing mine and what you think of kumiko deck design hopefully you enjoyed the video and hopefully you're inspired to make a kayak yourself it's a very achievable project it's just lots of small doable steps if you are interested be sure to check out Guillemot Kayaks or Nick Schade's youtube channel and i'll put links in the description thanks to Corin for hanging out in the workshop for a couple of weeks we had an awesome time if you did enjoy the video please like and subscribe thanks for watching and i'll see you on the next one
