Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Eastern Arctic Kayak Construction - Interlude

Yesterday I blocked in the keelson on  the inverted deck of the kayak in preparation for installing the ribs.  I am now at a crossroads where there are a number of ways to construct the ribs.  Not knowing exactly what the shape of the bottom of the kayak should be since I have never built this type of kayak before, I have to come up with a way to do this.  I can think of any number of ways to proceed but would like to go with the aboriginal scheme of shaping the ribs, whatever that is. 
Zimmerly is of no help here. His article in Sea Kayaker gives you the exact dimensions to cut the ribs to.  This only works if you also shaped the deck exactly like he instructed.  Since my deck is not shaped like his, his dimensions will do me no good.
I could do the ribs the way I normally do them, that is, steam bend them which would produce rounded chines and a slightly rounded bottom, but I want to go for the flat bottom and hard bends in the ribs approach that is more common for the EA kayak.  I guess I will just have to experiment and see what happens.

1 comment:

Adam Lambert said...

Thanks for writinng this