Groundhog Day

The first saturday of the qajaq building workshop was a repeat of everything I had done up to this point. Thus the title of Groundhog Day. I'll start off with a picture of Chuck and the ladies working on scarfing two 8" sections together for a gunwale. They all got much more done than I did this Saturday.

I started by finishing the mortises in the gunwales for the ribs. Then I clamped the wood to a table in order to plane out some rough cuts that would have shown underneath the skin. I had started with a 2x4x16 piece of wood that was roughtly ripped in half for the gunwales. This is when one of the shop elves pointed out how warped my wood looked. Upon further inspection I agreed that the wood was pretty "wonky"; this is a technical term for those of us who have no woodworking experience. This is why it took someone else to point out the flaws in my gunwales.

My friend Ken had arrived with some pretty sweet wood that did not have one knot in it. All of us were jealous of his good fortune. Allan & I had spent the better part of a cold and snowy Saturday searching different lumber yards looking for just such a find. So Ken made a call for me and an hour and a half later I was back in the shop with 2 new pieces of clear, 1x4x16 pine for my gunwales.

I managed to get most of the marks for the deck beams, ribs and various body parts onto the new wood before it was time for me to head off to work. I had cut down the previous gunwales to 15', which would've given me a finished overall length of 16". I decided to make the qajaq longer and not cut down the new pieces of wood, so I couldn't just transfer the marks from the previous wonky gunwales. Why you might ask? I have no idea, I'm flying by the seat of my pants and making changes on a whim. This isn't rocket science or I wouldn't be doing it. lol!

Sunday afternoon I was back at the shop and hard at work. I got all the mortises cut and cleaned out for the ribs. Then I ripped the gunwales down from 4 inches to 2 1/2 inches and attatched "triangles" to the bow end of the gunwales. I took a 4" section and cut in on the diagonal like is suggested in the Mark Starr book. I glued them in place, then used duct tape and clamps to hold them in place. Chuck also made this suggestion as he finds that the bow of his first qajaq gets buried in the waves instead of going over them.

Monday night found me marking out the curve of the gunwales and trying to figure out exactly what the shape of the bow will look like. I am very reluctant to start cutting for fear of not liking it. But as suggested I will take off only a little at a time until I'm happy. Not much else was accomplished on my qajaq, but I helped others with their questions.