Fourteen Foot Baidarka Rebuild

This particular boat suffered the indignity of shrinking skin which caved in a good percentage of its ribs.  So I decided that it was time to rebuild the boat.  Aside from replacing damaged ribs, I also wanted to elevate the rear deck and make the cockpit coaming level.  I had lowered the rear deck to make rolling the boat easier but as it turned out, lowering the back deck simply made it harder to get good back support. So on with the pictures.

What happened was that the nylon skin shrank to such an extent in the hot California sun that it caved in the ribs. Not only did the shrinking skin recurve the ribs, it broked them.  A few ribs at either end of the boat survived.

Slitting the stitching on the deck.

Slitting the lashings around the coaming which hold the skin to the coaming.

The skin has been slit all around, ready to pull it off.

Except for the ribs, the hull is in mostly good shape.

The first step in getting the bad ribs out is to unlash them from the keelson..

The tail fin is looking a bit ragged.  It was made out of plywood and I decided to replace it with redwood.

For some reason I added a deck beam for better foot support without taking the other deck beam out. So that deck beam toward the front had to come out.

Here,s the stuff I took off the boat, coaming, coaming stanchions, tail fin and both the fore and aft deck stringers.  I took off the deck stringers just to make putting the new ribs in easier.

Here's the extra deck beam removed and all the bad ribs.

I already added a new tail fin.

There's the hull stringers hanging out in space waiting for support from a new set of ribs.

Next we will be bending some new ribs, followed by some painting and varnishing and relashing all the stuff that came off during the deconstruction. Stay tuned.

Baidarka Chair

What do you do with an old baidarka (kayak) once it starts falling apart?  Why you make a chair out of it.
I don't know the details behind this picture other than that it came to me from people living in or once living in the Aleutians. I won't mention their names just in case they would rather not be named. On the other hand, if they feel like they would like to be named, I would be glad to name them.
The question here is whether making a chair out of a baidarka is considered creative re-use or an act of vandalism, or worse yet, sacrilegious destruction of a valuable cultural artifact.  Who knows.  Probably the kayak was falling apart and someone did some creative re-use.
Regardless of what is going on here, let's try to identify some baidarka parts that might have gone into this chair. The skinny rods that form the back look like hull stringers.  The larger upright pieces of wood that form the sides of the back look like sections of the stern parts of gunwales.  The rest of the pieces are hard to identify other than that they might be deck beams.  And the seat looks like a piece of kayak skin. 
Rock on.

Woman - Dog Boat

Inka Petersen launched her two hatch baidarka yesterday.  One hatch was for her, the other for her dog, Rosie.  The boat was a bit of a challenge to design since its volume was fairly small - total length 15 feet by 22 inches wide.  With low free board, proper trim becomes more important.  So we launched the boat.  I will let the pictures tell the story.

The boat empty. Trim good.

The boat minus Rosie.  Needs ballast.

The boat with Rosie in the dog seat. Trim pretty good.

Actually, part of what contributed to the trim inequity was that none of the seams had been sealed yet and the boat was taking on water fast and heading for the stern.  Still, we all were happy, christened the boat with some Anchor Steam, a local SF brew.  I was hoping for some Alaskan Amber but the supermarket wasn't handling it. Plus I got a swim in. 

Preparing for the Apocalypse

Screen shot from the video game, The Last of Us, published by Naughty Dog

The creative arts are often a good indicator of a culture's subconscious obsessions.  They are not necessarily a good indicator of what will happen next, but they are often a good indicator of what we are afraid of.  The apocalypse seems to be one of those things.  The apocalypse, for those that don't have access to popular media is a civilization-destroying cataclysm, often undefined as in the book and movie, The Road, but sometimes explicitly spelled out as in the game, The Last of Us, (lethal virus or some such thing).

Cover from the DVD, The Road, based on the book by Cormak McCarthy in which the protagonists have to survive in a post-apocalyptic earth destroyed by some vague menace

I don't know how wide-spread fears of the apocalypse are but they seem to exist or these books wouldn't be written or movies wouldn't be made.

On the Beach, a movie from the fifties featuring a Nuclear Holocaust

It used to be Nuclear Destruction that we feared the most, which is understandable since the government had an active policy of making us afraid of it, complete with drills and everything but that fear seems to have gone away since the real thing such as the disasters in Chernobyl and Fukushima though thoroughly awful seem to be viewed as local, survivable disasters.

Post WWII Cologne, Germany.  By the time my family moved into the area a little north of where the picture was taken, things were pretty well cleaned up, although we still had piles of rubble across the street from our apartment building.

In any case, the main reason I bring up the apocalypse is that sometimes I wonder how much my own fascination with primitive boat building technology is related to expectations of societal collapse.  I don't fear collapse, perhaps because I spent my first decade in a country that recovered from being bombed flat in WWII. I see collapse as survivable but having lived through a partial collapse I don't see it as entirely improbable either. 

Replica of an Unagan kayak from Akun, Alaska

Meanwhile, I continue to build skin on frame kayaks because I love the technology and the boats.

Old Kayak, Bent Ribs

I've got one more set of photos on deck for the old kayak series.  Not that I don't have more old kayaks or old kayak photos, but it's a matter of being able to find them.

Today's tale of woe is all about the lethal combination of heavy nylon fabric and a boat left out in the sun for too long.  Nylon, if you don't already know, contracts with high temps and as you can see in the photos, pushes down on the keelson and bends the ribs into a reverse curve.  This isn't that bad, mostly it makes the hull a little flatter.  What is worse is the end to end shrinkage of the fabric which compresses the keelson which responds by taking on something of an S curve when viewed from above.  This makes the boat pull to one side.  But even that is not lethal and I managed to fix it with a rudder.  It's just that the boat is not the elegant craft that you started out with. So beware of heavy nylon combined with heavy sun.

Danes Build Baidarkas

Danish kayak builder and teacher Svend Ulstrup,  sent me some photos of the work he is doing in Denmark. Apparently, his students just finished building 48 baidarkas or iqyan.

One of Svend's innovations is to put hatches like miniature cockpit coamings on his boats.  He also has his students add sea socks which keep sand out of the boats and can double as backpacks.
Unlike most builders in the US, Svend uses all plant derived products products for building his kayaks, lashings are hemp or jute, sewing twine is cotton, boat skins are linen and sealant is linseed oil.  Although he seems to be adding some synthetic colorings these days.
For more info on Svend, see his website

Iqyax^ (Baidarka) Research

I am currently working on the improved Bay Boat, that is, San Francisco Bay Boat.  The baidarka I had been paddling most frequently is about 20 years old, re-ribbed once and reskinned a number of times and a fairly close replica of an Atka baidarka.  This particular boat just got a paint job.  The old paint job consisted of a varnish base covered some time later by a color coat.  The color coat was peeling badly, probably because I never sanded the base coat before putting on the color coat.  The re-paint is done now.

 

The baidarka is on the left with its new coat of gray latex house paint.  I store my boats outside so the most critical job of the paint is to keep the UV rays from degrading the nylon skin.  Opaque paint does a good job of that and more cheaply than exterior varnish.  That's my King Islander to the right of the baidarka.

The only drawback of the old baidarka is its narrow width and fairly deep hull which makes it a challenge to keep upright.  It's actually not that bad once you get used to it, but it's not a boat that you can just sit in and relax.  When you're not moving, you need to brace or have the paddle out as an outrigger.  

So, enter a wider version of the Atka iqyax^.  The idea behind this boat is sufficient width to allow lounging without constant bracing but not enough width to make it slow, a boat suited for longer stays on the water, like a bay crossing, about a one hour affair.

Inside view of the hull.  Good width and flat rib profile to make the boat stable. 

And an outside view of the hull with the stringers temporarily taped and lashed in place.  Also note the open jawed bow, a configuration I have been playing with, mostly because this configuration makes it easier to align the keelson with the bow assembly.

Also the upturned nose of the other bow configuration is more prone to breaking because the grain runs across the upturned part instead of in line with it. 

The iqyax^ and the Sea Otter

A few years ago, a friend of mine gave me a bronze model of an Unangan kayak.  This year, my wife gave me a bronze sea otter. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, the sea otter was made to roughly the same scale as the kayak and so I put the sea otter on the deck of the kayak where it looks nice and appropriate and also cute.

The notion of a sea otter on the deck of an Unangan kayak is mostly a fantasy.  Sea otters were hunted by Unangan men in the service of the Russian fur traders aka promyshlenniki and later under American rule until the hunt was outlawed in 1911. Apparently, it dawned on somebody in the government that sea otters were near extinction.
So, perhaps coincidentally, the sculptural assemblage of kayak and sea otter is a  belated celebration of the one hundred year anniversary of the cessation of the sea otter hunt.

To modern urban sensibilities, the notion of hunting sea otters is abhorrent since they are so indisputably cute even as full grown adults.
But sea otters were hunted for practical reasons, that is, for money that the Chinese were willing to pay for their fur.

The Chinese needed the fur for their aristocracy which needed the luxuriant fur to trim their aristocratic robes as shown above.

The fur, when not attached to an imperial Chinese robe looks like the above. Legal note:  Only Alaskan Natives may possess sea mammal furs in the raw.  Non-natives may possess art or crafts objects that incorporate sea mammal parts if created by natives.
The Spanish in America, specifically in Baja and Alta California, received mercury in payment from the Chinese for sea otter furs.  The mercury was then used to extract gold from ore and the gold was shipped back to Spain to finance wars against other European nations.  And so it goes.
Sea otters are safe for the time being.  Oil has been found to be much more vital to economic well-being than mercury or gold.

Baidarka-Iqyax^ Interior

Inside of the baidarka, newly built with the sun coming through the skin.  Sure is pretty.

Another Iqyax^

My friend Patty, Unangan bent-wood hat maker sent me this photo.  Sharon, the young woman in the picture made a scale model iqyax^ by following the instructions in my book.  The iqyax^ was in the UA Fairbanks Native Arts Exhibit. 

The Lashomatic Video

I took this video a few years ago.  Quality is so so, but it gets a few points across.  The main point is that the lashing of hull stringers to ribs does not need to be odious or tedious.  The key is to have a good lashing pattern and to have one hand inside the boat and one outside the boat.  If you watch closely, you will see that this particular lashing pattern is quite simple.  What makes is simple is that the string is constantly moves in a counterclockwise direction.  Sometimes it backs up on itself to cinch the previous turn down but the overall motion is consistently counterclockwise. There is no magic to the counterclockwise part.  You could just as well do this lashing clockwise, especially if you are left-handed.
The other thing that makes this lashing fast is that you have one hand inside the boat and one hand outside the boat.  That way you just pass the string back and forth between hands.  The only thing that goes back and forth is the string.  The hands stay in place, and that's what makes this lashing fast. How fast?  Under one minute. The camera I had at the time, a Canon G2 would cut out after thirty seconds of video.  That's all it would do.  Back then memory was more scarce.
What gets cut out at the end of the video because of the thirty second time constraint is the tying off of the string.  Three half hitches and it's done. You throw your hands in the air when you're done like in calf roping and the clock stops.
One thing about this lashing pattern is that it's not particularly immobilizing, but that doesn't really matter.  The point of the lashing is just to hold the parts in place until you get the skin on.  Once the skin is on, it provides the pressure to keep the stringers from moving around.  And if you want really immobile lashings, just paint your handiwork with water based varnish when you're all done.  That stuff is like glue and will make for more immobile lashings than more fancy and more cumbersome lashing patterns.

Two New Kayaks

Over the last month or so, students built two new boats.  These turned out quite nice. Both are baidarka variants, that is, inspired by an Aleut kayak design.

Christian's boat in the foreground and Diane's boat in the background.

This is Diane's boat, all of 10 feet long.

 

Diane's boat again from a different angle. Christian's boat in the foreground.

 

A view of the inside of Christian's boat with all the ribs in place.

 Christian with the completed frame, 15 feet long.

 Christian's boat with the skin on.

Diane wants to be able to sail her boat down the road so we put in a mast step.  The round dowel is a temporary stand-in for the mast.  Diane was opting for linen lashings.

Diane's boat with its skin on.

Closeup on the nose.

A Visit to the Hearst Museum

No, not the Hearst Castle, the Hearst Museum at the UC Berkely campus. Named after Phoebie Hearst, philanthropist mother of William Randolph Hearst the newspaper man and creator of the Hearst castle and the inspiration for the Orson Wells movie, Citizen Kane.
This place used to be called the Lowie museum, named after an anthropologist. Something must have happened to trigger the name change, probably a gift of money. That's usually what motivates change.
So anyway, Mike Livingston was in town and he had never seen the baidarka frame at the museum before, so we went to visit it. Mike also arranged for us to see a bunch of baidarka models that were in the museum storage.
I wasn't expecting to see much new stuff since I had been to the museum twice before. And models tend not to offer much insight either. So all in all, my expectations were low. But as it turned out, I did learn a bunch of new stuff and noticed things that I hadn't noticed before. So overall, this turned out to be quite an enlightening trip.
A few photos and some brief comments follow. This is not a full analysis of the situation which I hope to work up and post somewhere but just a quick overview of what I noticed.



Here is a picture of the bow of the Aleut kayak from Atka. Of special note is the lashing at the top that ties the deck stringer to the bow plate. You might have to click on the photo for a larger view to see it clearly. Anyway, the string goes through the deck and then through a hole in the vertical part of the bow assembly.
What I noticed was that this was one of a number of modifications to the boat made by someone other than the original builder. My suspicion that it was other than the original builder who made the add-ons is based on two things. The original build was of very high quality and workmanship. And the builder didn't paint the frame red until all the building was done, including the boring of holes. What makes me think that the bow lashing was an add on is that the holes are rougher than the original lashing holes and that they are not painted, that is the boring of the holes exposed fresh wood.


The same goes for the stern. A new lashing was added to tie the tail fin into the stern cross block. Not shown here are three more additions that would reduce the flex of the frame. Apparently, the add ons were made to stiffen up the boat. Why would someone want to stiffen up the boat? Apparently to sail it.



Here is the mast step add on lashed to the ribs. We saw the sail that was used with this boat, but didn't take it out of its plastic bag.





We looked at a bunch of baidarka models as well. For some reason, all but one were two-holers. No singles. As I already mentioned, I wasn't expecting much since models are usually not to scale and distorted for ease of building, but these were quite accurate. The detail on the deck gear and paddles was especially revealing. What sets these models apart from some others I have seen is that they were apparently made by men who had also done the full size boats and gear, so the detail was quite authentic. I especially noticed the paddles. The one pictured above and below was of the short loom variety. I don't think that all paddles of that period had short looms, but some definitely did. Looms were on the order of 18 to 20 inches and blades were on the order of 40 inches.





Here is a picture of a guy holding his short loom paddle. I think that paddlers held these paddles like Greenlanders held their short loom paddles, that is, thumb and forefinger curled around the loom at the root of the blade and the rest of the hand sitting on the root of the blade.