Spruce, meet Mr. DeWalt

After a few false starts we have learnt a lesson on tool quality. Cheap circular saws are cheap for a reason.. A blade 0.5mm off axis will over a 4000mm run mess up a 5mm plank. That is where Mr. DeWalt enters the stage.. In the basement, ready for some heavy duty runs once christmas eve is over (we celebrate christmas eve in Norway, not christimas day)

Done setting up stations, we hope.

Here Frode is clearly realising that we are getting good at this. At least we hope we are getting good at it. It looks fair, and we hope the end result will be fair as well. Next time we will be able to do this a heck of a lot faster! Next time we will be much more careful when we mark and cut the stations as well. One millimeter here and one there can spell trouble. CNC cut stations would be fantastic to work with!





Now all stations are up, except station 5 and 30. They should be quick work next building session. We have experimented a bit with handheld circlesaws for ripping the strips. So far the two cheap chineese saws we tested have not been straight. Even a 1mm offset between the frame and the blade spells disaster when ripping. We are now trying to borrow a decent saw so we can rip some strips next week. If we can't get a good saw, we will have to fall back on a table saw. We might have to do so anyway if we dont master the technique, but if first time kayak builders manage..

Aligning stations.

A fickly job which takes lots of time. 5mm her and 2mm there, or you get a "not so good looking" hull. Wonder how much we can take of this before we begin putting planks on.. Tonight we got some new lessons in the art of aligning stations. We quit when we started suspecting that our fairing batten was unfair. At least it felt unfair to us (pun intended).
An australia sailor claimed that strip planking was the devils building method. I begin to wonder if he had a point after all..