Building two CLC Kayaks

the beauty of boatbuilding

After a lifetime of small sailboats, Julie and I are building two kayaks from Chesapeake Light Craft.  I'm still a sailor at heart, but Julie is probably more suited to kayaking. We can envision all sorts of fun combinations of sail + kayak.

I will build the Shearwater 16 and Julie will build a Chesapeake LT 16.  We bought the kits while at the Mid Atlantic Small Craft Festival and picked up kits a few weeks later from CLC's shop in Annapolis, MD.

The first  step was to augment my already extensive set of boatbuilding tools.  This included lots of different clamps from Harbor Freight Tools.  I also added to my workbench a few bench dogs manufactured by Record.  I inherited these beautiful cast iron devices from my grandfather.  They probably date from the fifties or sixties.

Record Bench Dog

 I also made a few light weight saw horses for assembling the panels.

light weight saw horse

Here's a view of panels being joined together.

Panel assembly

The temperature in my basement shop is in the low 50 degrees F so we are using work lamps with 70 Watt incandesent bulbs to get the surface temperature high enough to cure the epoxy.

heating lamps

The book case in the background has every issue of Small Boat Journal and most issues of Messing About in Boats.

the beauty of machine cut plywood kits