Hi Wayne, Great to hear from you again. Sorry, for not replying earlier. Have had a full three weeks to say the least. Hope your mother is ok? How are you doing? Good to see your posts again and that you are back on track with your own baidarka. Not much commentary has been received about hauling the 200ft. of aluminum tubing up 11-stories. Went ok except for the building manager having a hairy because of a line I had lowered with a bottle of water to stabilize the line from drifting in the wind. She was worried about the seniors in the building tripping over it. She was right about it, so we recruited building maintenance to assist me from the ground as I lifted the load up hand over hand. Whew, I should have worn gloves. All in all it went well and I easily managed to bring it in along the North wall and laid it all up on my 18 ft. building jig. I have a million dollar view of the Saskatchewan River valley and fir trees that blanket the valley. The ice is melting and open water is flowing. The psycho kayakers are already out amongst the ice chunks paddling their squirt boats. Spring is hear and I am in my glory. Baidarka are about to be born! Templates cut out and glued to four- 2ft.x2ft. 3/4 ply boards and one 2ftX4ft ply board. This covers all the rib stations, keel and stringer bending templates and the hatch combing template. I glued them down, colour coded the tube lines, coated the print cut outs with white glue and then finished coating all the template boards with Behr 50 plastic decoupage resin to provide a glass coat over the prints(these will be permanent working templates. In three days I will be drilling out the holes with my newly acquired Delta Drill press for the holsclaw bender bending positions and dowl holes which help guide and stabilize the tubing as it is being bent. Twelve feet of 3/8ths 6061-T6 aluminum dowl is being cut up into two inch pegs for use with the hatch combing and bending jigs etc.. One four X eight sheet of 1/8th 6061-T6 Aluminium plate has been ordered from Montreal and will be cut to size and shipped next week. I pre measured all the flat ware plate for the stem bulkhead, stern quarter deck, stern plate,stern bulkhead, fore deck, bow stem and stem head, etc. and gussets. I calculated the size of cuts to allow ease of cutting the aluminum plate in narrow columns of 48" long from 2.5" ,6",12.5", 12", 8-3/4", and 8" to allow for ease of insertion into my 10 inch drill press. All the aluminum flat ware will be pre drilled before cutting next week. Ordered three more sets of Plans from George Dyson this week, and should be arriving about the same time as the Aluminum plate which is coming up from Calgary (via Montreal QE ). What is going on is that I had started with one Baidarka and now I am building four (since good friends have become crazed kayakers and want one as well). I modified a Black & Decker work mate by covering over the boards with 3/4inch oak and screwing (and counter sinking) to the old surface. I mounted a pair of twoXfour's to make up a four inch jaw vise which I will use to secure the ribs while lashing gussets and rib sections together. What a handy work station, an absolute delight and great invention. My apartment is clean and tidy, No mess to speak of since everything has been planned out so carefully. Hope to start bending the keel and stringers next week as well. All that is left is to correctly cut up the station jig supports and mount them on the 18ft. building jig and run plum lines to make certain of perfect level and alignment of the stations (accuracy here is very critical). When this stage of the project is complete, I will post of our further progress when the ribs, keel, gunwales and stringers are reading for lashing. Neoprene and Hypalon have been sourced and priced and we will be ordering 15 oz. ballistic nylon from George in about one month. Gadzooks, bring an engineer onto a project and combine two promoter analyzers and one controller analzyer and do you ever get things done quick. Wow! What synergy we are enjoying, what great friends. Got to get the barbQ gassed up tis the season to work and eat.. This is much more fun than building solo, let me tell you. Indeed this has been todate a most enjoyable project even though I am doing it in my apartment eleven stories up in a high rise. All the coating and lashing will be done else where, including the cutting of the aluminum plate (because of the racket aluminum makes when being cut). Having friends join in the project has also provided for tremendous synergy (my hiking buddy being an engineer helps) and his lady(school teacher) who is chomping at the bit to start manufacturing the spray skirts and fan sails as per George Dyson's plans. Since these Baidarka (stretched 5.28M's) are 18ft. 4 inches (smaller than the 21.64 double baidarka) I have reduced the sail area from the plans of the original 21.64 to accommodate the single kayaks. I had to laugh when I read in George's book 'Baidarka" about a remark a friend of his made having sailed in one of George's kayaks. This guy was apparently a carrier pilot and made the remark that the only other experience comparable to going down wind in one of George's baidarka was being launched off the deck of a carrier in an F-4 phantom. We are of course employing a combination 'Tab and foil' rudder and most definitely utilizing Alex Ferguson's wonderful peddle design so as to eliminate rudder flutter. The tab works just great I am told, so the foil rudder will serve well in rough seas and/or while down wind sailing. Many thanks to George Dyson, John Winters, Alex Ferguson, Bill Low, Peter Carter, Kirk Olsen, Craig Kelford, Tom Clark, Chris Young, Wolfgang Brink, Hendrik Moroske, and especially Richard Ian-Frese who's picture of his two single Baidaka and personal comments inspired me to GOMA and get building. The help by way of advise that I have received has been nothing less than tremendous. Hope I can have one in the water before Sylvio Lamarche gets back from Vietnam. By the way when is the Kaslo Jazz festival anyway? Cheers, Philip Wylie Edmonton, Republic of Alberta (land of the free with no cursed NDP) Now if we could only liberate B.C. they too could be free. 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