Setting up the strongback and the forms for the Petrel strip built sea kayak build. I also scarf together some sheer strips.
hey welcome back to the Guillemot kayaks
workshop I'm Nick Schade and in this
episode we're building a strip build
petrol the petrol is a 17 foot long sea
kayak suitable for rough water paddling
or exploring lakes and whatever you want
to use it for it's a really fun both to
paddle is fast and maneuverable and its
really confidence-building in rough
water so in this episode we'll be
setting up the forms I already had the
forms pre-cut from a previous build I'm
just reusing those same forms you'll
notice since I have a 13 foot long
strong back that the end forms are a
little bit longer than they typically be
on a a kit or something since my strong
backs are all 13 feet long I make my
forms to fit those strong backs if you
were to get a kid or something or deal
with my plans you'd find the stand of
strong whacks a little bit longer and
thus the end forms a little bit shorter
but it's the same process just slightly
different forms after I get the forms
put together I'll work on making the
sheer strips we're using Cove and bead
strips and I don't have any long enough
so I will end up scarfing the strips
together so let's get started
so I have a set of forms here from the
last time I built the petrel so I don't
need to make any looks like I didn't
have the CNC machine when I last built
the petrel so we'll just break these out
and string along the strong back
[Music]
and inner stems installed I get the
strong back ready to work here I've got
some little work benches on either side
of the strong back that I can work on
strips on so I'm ready to start
installing strips so the first thing I
need to do is the sheer strip this is a
17 foot kayak and the longest strips I
have are 17 feet pretty much exactly and
if you follow the shear along here since
it's curved the 17 foot kayak has a
shear that's a little bit longer than 17
feet not a big deal so what I'm going to
do is I'm going to scarf together a
couple strips to make a long strip for
the shear strip I like to scarf the
shear strip together so I have something
that bends in a nice fair curve and I
also want to select a strip that I think
will look nice along the shear line
that's sort of a point that attracts the
eye my plan is to put a pin stripe along
the shear line so what I want to do is
choose a dark strip so when I put the
pin stripe there there's the most
contrast between the pin stripe and the
wood at that location
so I'm just gonna look through my stack
of strips here find some strips that are
reasonably dark pull them out see what
we got
so I've got three strips here that are
quite dark and just inspecting the
strips and I see that this strip the
plane sort of gouged into it a little
bit so it's a little bit narrow here a
little bit thin so I'm just going to cut
that bit off and then just look down the
length make sure everything else is good
about these strips started out of 16
footers so I'm just going to take one of
them cut 2 foot sections off of it that
I can scarf onto the ends of the 16
footers and that way I'll have something
around 18 feet which should be plenty to
reach the end here so just double check
to make sure I have enough length so I'm
going to make a scarf on the end of
these strips and they're going to do it
all at once I'm going to do it all with
hand tools
I'm gonna stack my pieces of wood in a
long stack here and I'm going to stagger
each and back an inch or so so I have a
stack here everything staggered back
about an inch or so just try and make it
a fairly uniform stagger and the beads
and coves are all on the same side on
all those strips and I'm just going to
put some scrap strips as the bottom
layer and also the top layer just
putting a clamp on it all to hold it all
together try and make that spacing a
little bit more uniform
I want to set the end of this one just
at the end of my workbench there now I'm
going to take and just run my plane down
that stack so I have stairs here I'm
trying to make it a ramp
this requires a good sharp plane so if
your cedar is not cutting well you
probably need to sharpen your plane see
you should cut pretty easily so you want
these ends pretty close to square
doesn't matter if it's perfect this
isn't that critical a joint we're just
trying to make a decent scarf there and
you know the length of these each side
just sort of eyeballed it but if you do
it in a stack like this and just take
this piece and flip it over and join it
to that piece since you did it together
the slope should match up pretty well
and I'll go together somewhat like that
and this one will go together someone
like that so that should be decent not
perfect but decent I'm going to glue
these joints with superglue I have found
that super glue is nice in there that's
quick but on the end grain of wood like
this it doesn't stick all that well the
first time all so what I do is I put
some glue on it
spread that around
let it soak in a little bit and then
spritz it the accelerant let that harden
up so now that endgrain is sealed and so
when I go to glue it it'll be a little
bit more effective so it's just going to
go together like this I want to make
sure when I put it together that it's
straight doesn't have a kink in it so
I'll put glue on here
spray the other piece with accelerant
and then stick it together likewise with
the next piece
so I have two strips ready to go here
for the shear line on either side of the
boat and they're going to go right here
which is also the part line so the deck
and Hull will get joined together at
this year line or part line and right
now I'm going to work with the cove side
up as I'm stripping so in this case I'll
start at the shear line move up to the
Kia line and The Cove will be up the
whole way when I flip the forum's over
to work on the deck I will then be
working with the cove up again and in
that case that means if the coves up
here the coves going to be down on the
other half so it would be meeting bead
to bead at the shear line that's just
not practical you might think would be
nice to have it immediate a covin bead
that way it would sort of snap together
but as a practical matter when you get
the epoxy on here in the fiberglass that
ends up dripping off this edge a little
bit and messing up that edge if I had a
bead there it would just be full of
blobs of epoxy and that's not practical
to deal with and it's almost impossible
to get that cleaned up and it's just a
mess so what I do is I cut the bead off
and that way it's going to be
essentially a flat edge where it meets
at the part line or the shear line so
I'm just going to take these to the
table saw cut the bead off and then I'll
be ready to use them so I'll set the
table saw up here such that I cut the
bead right off and it's kind of an
arbitrary with whatever is enough to
carve cut that bead completely off
[Music]
so that's it for this episode I hope you
learned something I support these videos
by selling plans for example the plans
for the petrol that I'm building here
available on my website I have got all
the plans for all my other designs I've
also got my Robo bevel tool which by the
way I won't be using in this build too
much and I've got t-shirts etc so that's
one way you can support these videos
otherwise just liking and sharing and
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really helps a lot and if you're really
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help me produce all these videos so
until next time thanks a lot and happy
paddling