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From: Jim Champoux <jim_at_sigall.com> subject: [Paddlewise] Log entry...No. 5 Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 10:58:18 +0300 · This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:32:46 PDT

	I have posted the picture that accompany this update to the So-Cal
kayak builders page to minimize my use of this list's bandwidth.
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/btreecs/.

 I will be happy to privately email anyone with questions.

Well, I didn't have to fix my stems. The only problem appears to have been
my inexperience. After several emails back and forth to Martin Step and
John Winters, I realized that I was completely off the mark. John and
Martin, trying to be as informative and patient as possible, gave me the
information I needed, but I was pretty insistent that there was a
problem...then it came to me, in one of those Homer Simpson "Doohh!"
moments. You can lead a horse to water...etc.
Anyways thank you John and Martin for putting up with this first timer.

Next...

So the next step was to lay our first strips at the shear on both sides and
level them. The stems had to be ground to shape a little at a time, I used
a small high speed air grinder. The strips went on, were mostly, level. Jon
said. "hey dad, are these waves supposed to be in here? I sighted down the
length of the boat and noticed that the shear strips did indeed wave up and
down. I guess the parallax when placing the strip's, bead side on the shear
line of the stations really was a factor. Easy enough to fix. We then put a
level between the shear strips at every station and all was right with the
world. We put a couple strips up and then the stomach flu hit, I spent the
remainder of the day on my back. You have no idea how frustrating that was.

	Sunday I felt better, so I spent another couple hours putting up
strips. This is really a lot of fun.I used 9/16" ceiltile staples and a T50
stapler. We were extremely careful with the amount of glue (Titebond) that
we used, fearing a long and nasty sanding session later on. On my other
projects I have always let the glue dry before scraping it off, so I didn't
really relish wiping it into my nice clean strips. We used 60cc syringes
(no needles) that we were able to get a hold of, these laid down a perfect
line of glue in the cove. I stripped until I ran out of 16 footers, I must
get a finer blade for my coping saw, because it tears the cedar, a small
dowel saw, or Japanese pull saw would probably work better. But now that I
will be working with 14 footers, I need to make sure that my butt joints
are fairly smooth.

	The strips fit together, and bend and turn just like I hoped they
would. Having read about the process, it was nice to actually feel it go
together without struggle. Grinding the stems to the proper shape was
really the only part that I felt ill prepared for, even so, they came out
great. The resultant surface is smooth and beautiful

	For the first time in my life, I actually felt that sensual feeling
of appreciation for the shape of a boat that I have always read about. The
lines and shapes and bulges and turns of the hull are really very pleasing.

	This week I really want to finish up stripping the hull, but I
think I will force myself to wait until the weekend for Jon.

Jim Champoux

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