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Lots of Boatmaking Going On
Summertime is busy time - Tom had been making use of the Boathouse for a kayak camp during the week.
Connie brought some kids by - her daughter, Patience, wants to make a winner of a cardboard boat for the Toledo Boat Show this year. Her friends, Sebastian and Anthony, were there to help.
This is the design we were going to be building - elegant in it's simplicity slick in it's utility. It can easily carry an adult or a couple kids.
Cardboard boats are a great way to introduce people into boat making - you use a lot of the same techniques.
This is a project everyone can get into.
We learned to use a splining tool to make the creases - the trick is to press hard enough to crease but so hard as to puncture the fiber.
Center lines are important.
Suiting up for the fun part - glue.
We skipped the part about painting the insides - it takes too long to dry for this kind of a production - it's easy enough to paint later. As it is, we have to wait 20 minutes for the contact cement to cure before we fold it all up.
That's how quick one of these cardboard boats goes together - the kids from the kayak camp hadn't even been picked up by their parents yet.
Sebastian and Anthony both wanted in the Skin on Frame canoe, and they fit.
There we are - all glued up. Easy as pie.
Time to paint. I am beginning to think kids have no concept of how paint works.
Get the ends - always get the ends. Once painted, the kids were ready to go home . . .
. . . and I still had cardboard. Curt and I knocked this out pretty quickly - no idea if it would will work.
I saw this from the Bay Road on the way in to Toledo on Saturday morning. There were a few people watching from the road, so I pulled over to ask what had happened. The boat had been built in 1929 and been recently purchased. The new owner was on his way to Toledo to haul it out and restore it. The engine failed on the way up and she grounded. Somehow she got water in her fish hold and she got stuck pretty hard. The owner was confident he could raise her, so it is all good.
Terrible picture, but you try sneaking a photo of a pair of river otters playing under the docks. They'd come up and blow air out their snouts, then go fishing some more.
Dan, who we met last week, brought his grandchildren, Kerstin, Kloie, and Kamron down to join in on the action. "If you want to build a boat, teach the builders to yearn for the vast and endless sea." Into the water with them.
Bea looks GREAT on the water.
While the kids were occupied, I thought I'd try to make a Payson Butt Joint using drywall tape and contact cement. It did work, which is nice. It is floppier than a fiberglass one.
3 in a boat is only fun for so long. They took to the single boats quite readily.
It didn't take long for Kerstin to start exploiting the stability of the Tik-Tak Kayak
A new kid, Teal, came down and wanted to go paddling, so I had Kamron take him out in Daisy, which turned out cool, because . . .
. . . his older sister's name is Daisy (the tall girl in green.) I tried, mightily, to get her into a boat, but she was not having anything to do with it.
Here's another shot of kids in boats - love that stuff.
Back in the Boathouse, we returned to work on the Lazy Weekend Canoe . Curt and I had attached the bottom, Rocky and Dan - assisted by Jordan - were working on the butt-joints.
We are nothing if not an experiential learning environment. Kamron and Kerstin - closely supervised by Rocky and Jordan - learned to use an angle grinder to bevel the edges of the butt-strap.
I wanted to make another try at the cardboard canoe. I simplified the layout and had the kids help with doing the lining out.
Kerstin and Kloie are making the centerlines of the reinforcement board that will run down the middle.
It takes more practice than you'd think. They did an excellent job.
Lazy Weekend 2 is almost ready for sanding and primering. We are waiting to attach the seats until after we paint.
Getting ready to glue down the reinforcement board - you coat both surfaces with contact cement, so we traced around the pad.
Glue. Man, that is some stinky stuff. Great, but stinky.
Break time while the glue dries. Kerstin could tell the difference in stability between the Tik-Tak and the Yaquina, but she has excellent balance. Geez, turn your back for a minute and they are all standing up in their boats. That's why they are called "Life Jackets" and not "Good Idea Jackets."
Kamron sets the floor board.
Kloie learns to spline
Get ready to glue the stems
And Jordan works on the stems for the Lazy Weekend, too (lots of stuff happens concurrently at the Boathouse.) And that's it - I didn't get any pictures of the canoe going together, we were all busy folding it up. Next week. I promise.
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