Project Log

11/17/06

Finally, a long overdue update. In the past 3 years KHS students have added gunnels, glassed the inside, created a deck, shaped an ama, and installed seats. The hull and ama was finally completed this summer after some finishing touches by Mr. Craft (Gary Craft). In August we loaded it up (it's very light!) on Luke's truck and moved it down to Niumalu. We strapped a couple 2x4's for temporary iakos and floated it in the river. It is incredibly manueverable and is suprisingly comfortable to paddle. Mr. Craft recently completed custom iakos, so there should be surfing photos coming soon.

A complete set of photos has been added to the photo log.

If you were a student who worked on this canoe, email keizo@ocpaddler.com and I will add your name to this website. Please include one or two sentences on what you did.

6/1/03

New photo album that includes some explanations.

3/20/03

The bow again. This was right after we glued the strip up. You can see the two pieces we screw over to hold the front of in and the big piece that we tied on to help bend it down. We also had a stick pushing on the inside. It took us three days, mainly because we had to decide how to do it and then fit the strip very carefully. We had considered scarfing on another piece that would be angled to handle the bend better, but decided to just fit and force it in. It required some spiling with the thumb planar and creating new ways to clamp it. Actually we had to do this twice, since the first strip cracked (in the middle of the strip, not on a bend) in a rotten spot.

3/20/03

This is the bow. Most of the herring bone fitting is done here. We are about to put on probably the most critical and difficult strip. It required a little bit of spiling (so that it would handle the curve better) and some creative clamping to get on
During the past month we have had to create many more strips since we used up what we had. That involved a lot of planning, ripping, scarfing, and adding the bead & cove.

2/20/03

This is the bow of the canoe. We cut back into the strips already in place creating a herring bone pattern so that there is not an edge when the direction of the strips (the football) changes. Doing this has allowed us to bend the strips further down so they align with the rest of the canoe.
That brown splotch on the right is epoxy filler.

2/20/03

This is the back stern of the canoe. We have been using clamps more and more for the ends of the strips since there is no station to screw into behind them.
Both the front and back stations were drawn up by us last year since they were not provided. Our guessing has made the strip planking a bit more tough in the bow area.

1/9/03

The first strip in the bottom 'football' of the canoe goes on. It is not a center strip, but aligned on the center line. No difficult problems with this one. We just had to mark the stations to make sure the strip was going straight.

12/02

This is the bow of the canoe. We have had to readjust some strips and we are shimming the strips off the first station. You can see the voids from it in this picture. They will be filled with wood & epoxy plus it will be glassed over in the end. The hardest part is trying to make sure the sides are even and that we are twisting them the right amount. It seems like it will come out reasonably well even though inconsistencies in the wood have cause slight differences in the way the bow curves in. We may end up cutting the tip of the bow off so that it is not so sharp..We'll try to show that in another picture.

12/02

Quite a few more strips on. Notice the smaller sized strips. They are now 1" so they handle the curves better. This pictures shows the back of the canoe...It seems to be fitting together a bit easier than the front is. We've had a make many more strips, so the work has been pretty routine. Ripping strips, scarfing strips, ripping the strips to 1", adding the bead & cove, making sure the strip fits on the canoe and gluing it on. We're basically repeating this process for now..Until we get closer to the football of the canoe. When we start the football? We don't really know yet.

10/17/02

It's a new school year. Luke is no longer has this class and Kellan and I (keizo) are in different period so things are a little different. We have several new students working on the project in both periods. In the past several classes we've been able to get seven more strips on, up from the five we had at the end of last year. Ten are shown in the picture. This process is going relatively fast, however we will soon have to prepare more strips.

5/02

Our very first strip goes on. Boat builder Steve Gates can be seen helping in the background. It was critical that our first strip be very straight so the canoe would be fair and the rest of the strips would align correctly.

5/02

We created a jig to create a cove and bead on each strip. The jig consists of a router and several finger-boards that hold the strip in place while it is pushed along the blade. Cove and bead allows strips to fit together, similar to the way a hard wood floor interlocks. This was an easy process once the jig was finished.

4/02

Plastic is being put on each station so the strips will not stick to them. The stations need to be removed once the canoe is completed.

4/02

This is the bow station that had to be created. It needed slight modifications once we began gluing strips up.

3/02

Planning the wood was a long process of running the wood through that loud machine. Other students didn't enjoy this very much.

2/02

The albesia strips will need to be scarfed together so they can run the whole length of the canoe. This is a scarfing jig we built that cuts 8"/1" angles using a router.

1/02

We used a large piece of fishing line strung through every frame to make sure they are centered. The line was tightened and each station was adjusted so that none of them touched the line.

12/01

This picture was taken as we were placing stations onto the strong back. The model canoe was made by a student the previous year using strip planking.

12/01

This is the albesia wood the three man canoe will be made of. The logs were milled for us into these planks. We needed to plane them and create a straight side to cut strips off of. We selected about 8 planks from this stock pile.

9/01

This web site is a documentation of our canoe building project in Mr. Crafts Industrial Arts and Crafts (Manufactoring as of 2002/2003) class at Kauai High School.