A Rainy Day gets the Cockpit Collar Completed

A rainy day finally sees the sixty piece Ash collar around the cockpit shaped and finished. There has been almost as much work in this as the whole of the rest of the deck (or this is how it feels). Worth it in the end though.

The mahogany 'keystones' nicely divide up the pieces of Ash in the top laminate. All in all, nine layers of 3mm build up the height off the deck.

Yes we really have finished this part of the build. Now back to fitting out the rest of the kayak and once some warmer weather arrives it will be on with the varnish and out on the water!

Not a bad weekend, kayak building today and yesterday the first paddle of the season for my wife and I, this time in two of the plastic members of the fleet. And very good to see the ice has gone from the water!

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More Progress

It's always the final fitting out which takes the time, but the Resolute is coming together slowly.

We have lost count how many lamination's of Ash are going into shaping this cockpit surround.

This final layer gets the decorative treatment with some keystones of contrasting mahogany fitted in.

Time for a break from the workshop and back out onto the water for a January much needed winter sail! Will share the therapy of last weekend here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhsg_9WHXs8

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Cold Temperature Epoxy

The trouble with winter boat building is it gets cold at night, just as we are ready to glue!

My solution is some bent water pipe, a sheet of polythene and some tube heaters (not to mention every cramp in the workshop).

Here the cockpit surround, or at least the base of it (formed by 32 strips of ash) is finally shaped to the compound curves of the kayak deck. The hatch frame is also complete.

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Hatch and Cockpit

The frame is shaped and sanded up using the hatch as the pattern. It will eventually get glued back under the kayak deck, to form a lip to take the hatch and gasket. There is still one more frame to make to strengthen the hatch itself.

The temperature outside has now fallen below freezing, so all gluing operations need local heat to keep the temperature up for the epoxy to set. Little polythene tents help with a couple of tube heaters below.

The hatch frame needs laminating and shaping to the compound curves of the deck. So once again the deck is used as the mould with polythene underneath to prevent the whole lot sticking to the deck.

So far there are 36 pieces of Ash in the cockpit surround. This has been laminated up in 3mm Ash.

The surrounds are now being shaped up one at a time with a roiling bevel required around the inside. Eventually they will be glued to the deck and more layers of Ash added to the top to form a lip for the spray deck skirt.

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Cockpit and Hatch

The cockpit shape is carefully marked out over the deck in exactly the right position (I hope!)


A jigsaw has made light work of forming the two holes

The cockpit frame is being laminated in 3mm Ash. The first three layers here involve eighteen pieces and as many cramps as possible. We had cut this dead Ash tree down years ago from a neighbouring field. Kayaks were probably not in mind at the time but it's ideal for this job and bends well around the hull shape.

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Internal Glass Sheathing

The two halves now fully sheathed in glass

The resin is added and once again the cedar shows through the glass.

The glass cloth gets laid out along the inside of the hull and deck.

Cleaning up the inside of the kayak ready for sheathing.

Separating the deck from the hull became something of a problem for several hours, as some epoxy had found its way down from the deck to glue the two halves together too soon!

Once separated, the glue from joining the strip planking together must be removed.

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Glassing the Deck

Deck Sheathing

The deck has finally got completed and glassed today. The decorative stripes have been formed with some yellow pine and by selecting some particularly dark strips of the cedar.


Hopefully not too many runs and I just hope we can get the deck back off the hull once dry for completing the inside.

A glass shroud stretched across the deck and ready for the resin to dissolve the binding layer and turn the glass transparent once again, as if by magic!

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