Building the most Incredible Cedar Strip Kayak with Kumiko Deck

you may have seen my recent video where me and my mate Corin tried to build two kayaks in two weeks we finished Corin's and we got as far as building the hull on mine if you didn't see that video here's a very quick recap of what was involved first we cut and jointed all the cedar strips we made the forms to fit the strips around and that's pretty well as far as we got with this one and many of you did ask to see this one completed so that's what i'm doing in this video so let's get into it even though i had finished stripping the hull i've decided to add one more thin strip and that will be a contrasting accent strip made of camphor laurel it will highlight the shear line between the hull and the deck i don't have any camphor laurel long enough to run the length of the boat so i need to scarf three pieces together for each side of the kayak i'll glue that on and then i can get started on the deck the first strips of the deck need fitting to match and join the camphor laurel strip that i just glued to the hull i've ripped the bead from the one edge of the strip leaving the cove on the other side and i'll plane the square edge to fit using a hand plane and gradually fitting it all the way down the kayak i'll hot glue the strip to the forms but it doesn't get glued to the last strip of the hull and that's because the deck will eventually need to be removed to take out the forms to help keep the strip in place further i decided to add some hot glue stitches which will be very easy to remove afterwards now i can start adding and gluing more strips along the one side of the deck i've put a few strips at the one side of the  deck now i need to add some detail strips and i just prepared these ones on the table saw off camera the first one i've cut the cove off the one side i've still got the bead so that fits into the cove of the last strip and then from there i'll put a thin piece of camphor laurel there's no coving bead on any of these strips now they're just flat pieces or straight edged i should say another piece of red cedar that's a bit wider and then one more camphor laurel that's as far as i need to go down the first side for now so next i need to trim each end along the center line and that's ready to add the same strips along the opposite side of the kayak i've clamped a spare strip along the center marks on the forms and i'm sighting along the strip to make sure that it's straight before marking where i need to cut i'm keeping away from the line which i'll plane up to using a side rabbit plane the strips along this side are the same as the other but this time both ends need planing to fit the first end is easy enough but the other end is trickier as it needs to fit well and the strip needs to be the perfect length to get the strip to the perfect length i fit the one in first and then hot glue it to the forms so far down and then i established the correct taper on the other end with the strip being too long then i take a shaving off test fit it and take another and so on until it fits just right stripping out the deck was my favorite part of the whole project it may look tricky but it really isn't the worst part here is the amount of rain that we're getting which you can probably hear in the background and because of the damp conditions the glue is taking longer to set making it more of a wait between strips now the strips along each side of the deck are fitted i can start filling in the centers i'll start with two strips along the center line i'll glue those to each other using wood glue and then hot glue them down to the forms then it's just the case of cutting and fitting a strip either side until it's filled out here's a quick run-through of how to fit a strip first i mark the taper on the one end in place and then remove most of the waste using a knife and then after that i just refine it with a block plane and because these strips only reach as far as the cockpit i only need to cut and fit a taper to the one end which makes them easy to do the opposite end will get cut off later on when fitting the cockpit recess at one end of the boat i cut and glue one either side and then while the glue setting on those i'll move to the other end of the boat and i'll fit the next ones there when they're done the glue on the previous ones would have gone off i can remove the tape and start fitting the next ones there it looks pretty rough now but once it gets sanded it will start looking the part before i do start any sanding i'll use a card scraper to take off the high spots and any ridges this is called fairing and it gets it ready for sanding it takes a while but it's already looking much better so next i'll start sanding with an orbital sander and an 80 grit mesh disk i try and keep an even pattern and not staying in one place too long after going over the whole thing a few times i then hand sanded it to even it out even more that's one side done now for the other side i already have the plywood cockpit cut and that's because i made a copy of Corin's when he made his and i did that using a pattern following router bit we made them from full-size plans from guilemont kayaks and that can be seen in the previous video next i'll cut some of the offcuts of cedar strips into veneers   i've set the table saw to make one cut leaving a veneer either side of the blade i'll glue those onto the plywood with regular wood glue and when i get so fire around i'll clamp them down and then glue on the next pieces when the glue had set i put my trim router in the vise and with a pattern following a bit i trimmed up the edges to join the two pieces together i'm using spots of ca glue on the back and using accelerator so i can work my way around without having to wait for the glue to dry that came out great now i need to cut a recess in the kayak for it to fit into and first i need to mark that out using the full size plan fitting the cockpit does take a while i start at the front and fit that and gradually work my way around i think i'd say this is one of the trickiest parts of the whole build   getting a tight fit along the whole joint isn't easy but with patience it is doable i found that 40 grit sandpaper glued to a piece of cork worked very well at refining the edge to make things even trickier i decided to add a thin camphor laurel accent strip around the cockpit so once i had the cockpit fitted pretty good i took even more off using paddle pop sticks as spacers and off camera i cut the camphor laurel strips using the table saw that's looking pretty close it still needs a bit more adjustment but first i'll sand down the accent strip flush with the deck when using the paddle pop sticks as spacers i made sure that there was enough material left for final fitting now i'm using reinforced tape to hold the cockpit in position ready for gluing i gently remove deck from the forms easing the hot glue bond one at a time now i can glue the cockpit from the back and for that i'm using thick ca glue i'm really happy with how that came out next i need to tackle the biggest challenge of the project i asked in the previous kayak video if anyone wanted to see a kumiko deck design and there was a lot of responses wanting to see it so that's what i'm doing i'll be making the pattern with veneers as that's the only way i could think of doing it and that's because of the compound curved surface of the kayak the first thing i need to do is mark out the triangle grid which is the first part of the pattern after marking parallel lines down the length of the boat i then need lines at 60 degrees off those to make up the grid with the compound curves this isn't going to be easy but i'm doing my best to keep it as accurate as i can before starting this process i was very unsure whether it would work but i thought if it doesn't i can just sand it off and finish the kayak as it was so i thought it was worth a go i prepared some thin pieces of camphor laurel by hot gluing them down to a sled and then running that through the thicknesser these will be later made into veneers but first i cut the pieces down to the size of a single piece of the grid i then set up a fence on the disc sander at 30 degrees and then made a point on either end of the piece using calipers i kept checking and then taking a little more off until they were the perfect length i also used the one two three block to keep the pieces upright and then i just eyeballed the point making sure to keep it centered next i can make veneers and i did that by taking shavings with a block plane this looks like quite a few pieces already but it's really not even close to the amount that i'll need anyway next i'll iron them flat and i'll do that one at a time when i put the veneers onto the deck i don't want to get glue all over the surface so i'll make iron on veneers and i'll do that by painting pva glue onto them first and when they're dry i can iron them directly to the deck planing the veneers and ironing them flat was tedious enough but painting on the glue took forever i couldn't think of a good or quick way i just kept at it and again this batch here is such a small amount of what i actually need anyway let's try it out and see how they work that worked out great i did burnish the surface of the deck so i need to pay attention to that but it looks promising as i mentioned these pieces just make up the grid after i've completed that then i need to fill out the triangles with another three pieces i sanded out the burnish marks but it's something that kept happening and i ended up just sanding them all at the end i actually found this whole process very enjoyable it was just the painting of the glue onto the strips that spoiled it because of the compound curves the grid wasn't 100 accurate so the odd one or two pieces were too long i decided to just overlap them then sand them back and feather them out which worked out well and looked fine that's all the full pieces on the front deck done so next i'll start the remaining edge pieces they actually worked out very easy to do just iron them down and trim them with a chisel i really like how that's looking with just the grid but i'll keep going with the kumiko pattern and put the next pieces in i made the blocks of those off camera exactly the same way as the other ones apart from the points on the one end was made by setting the fence on the discs sander to 60 degrees i then went through the whole veneer making process again i found the best way of fixing these pieces was to put two in first and then add the third one afterwards the first two can be placed by pushing one end into the corners and then joining them in the center of the triangle even though this kumiko is just adding veneers many viewers will know that i love to incorporate regular kumiko into my projects too and i'm excited to announce the release of 200 of my handmade kumiko starter kits for anyone else wanting to give it a go with your favorite sharp chisel and just one of my limited run starter kits you'll have everything you need to create your first kumiko woodworking project this starter kit includes two handmade beech wood jigs the 16 basswood strips that you need to complete a cool six inch by six-inch kumiko project and a pdf download you can print off to lay out your build guaranteeing your success so while they're still available simply click the link in the description pick up one of my starter kits and you too can begin the art of kumiko and as always thanks for your support that's the front deck done and i'm so happy with it i honestly didn't know if it was going to work or not so let me know what you think of it it took three full days to make and fit the kumiko on the front deck now for the back deck and that took another three days now i'll crank up the temperature in the workshop ready for fiberglassing the hull i won't go into the fiberglassing too much as i showed that in the previous kayak video it's basically wet the cloth out scrape off the excess then when it started going off a little apply a fill coat of resin to fill in the weave of the cloth i'm no expert and i'd never done any fiberglassing before building these kayaks but it's not too difficult what i've done here isn't perfect but it's decent and it's good enough the next morning i trimmed off the excess cloth with a knife and then removed the hull from the forms next i'll prep the deck ready for fiberglassing and to do that it needs to put him back on the forms to keep its shape and i do that with a dab of hot glue on each form i go over the whole deck and inspect it and give it a final sand when I fibreglassed the hull i couldn't get the workshop hot enough so as most of the metal workshop is already insulated i've decided to do the rest of the fiberglassing in there i just had to fill in above the partition wall with some spare insulation and hold it in place with spring clamps it was getting pretty hot in here which worked out much better helping the resin to flow and soak into the deck even though the hull was fine this worked out much better i'm scraping off the excess again and this is to press the cloth down tight against the wood and to prevent the cloth from floating up which would make the fiberglassing weaker and while i'm fibre glassing i'll do the seat and backrest which i made in a separate video after the kayak had set and become slightly tacky i brushed on a coat of epoxy again to fill the weave the whole kayak will need more resin applied to it later to build it up for a smooth finish and the deck will need a good few coats to bridge over the kumiko i reckon that came out great and it's probably my best bit of fiberglassing that i've done yet the deck can come off the forms and that's it the forms are done with the seat and the backrest can be put aside for now and next i'll prepare the inside of the hull ready for fibreglassing i've got it back in the metal workshop again with plenty of heat going the first thing i'll do is mix some epoxy with sawdust that's for a fillet along the inside of the chines to add some strength i'm not sure i needed to add strips of fiberglass here as i'm actually glassing the inside of the hull with carbon fibre which i think will add enough strength without those strips i'm using the carbon fiber just for the look of it and so the seat has a backdrop and something to stand out against and i believe that it can be a bit tricky to use but i'll give it a go i put a full wide piece across the middle where the cockpit is and then i cut the second piece in half to place either side of that i don't have quite enough to do the whole thing so i'll use some pieces of fiberglass for the two ends it went pretty well but it's not perfect there were a couple of small spots where it lifted slightly obviously i didn't get enough resin in there but it's still pretty good and i'm glad i did it and i'll do better next time and while i did the hull i also set up to fiberglass the inside of the deck too it's the next morning and i clean the edge of the fiberglass on the carbon fiber i then set the deck up in the wood workshop ready to make the coaming the coaming is just a lip around the cockpit to keep water out of the boat we did show it in the previous video so i'll try and get through it quickly here i still wanted to show for anyone that didn't see the other video i'm gluing two inch strips of cedar to the inside of the cockpit using hot glue and then gluing the strips together at the same time with regular wood glue the hot glue is temporary as the coaming will get fiberglass later on and that will hold everything in place next i'm making the lip out of thin strips of cedar and that gets formed around the risers that i've just glued on using packing tape on the risers means that the lip can get removed when the glue sets it can then be cleaned up on both the top and the underneath of it and then the packing tape can get removed and glued properly in place i'm using a plywood spacer to fit the rim at a consistent height and then hold it with spring clamps while i glue it with ca glue the radius at the front of the cockpit was too tight to bend the rim around so i'll trim the ends off and then make pieces across the front and i'll make those in the same way after trimming off the risers i sand them flush and then run a trim router around the inside with a round over bit i finish it with a bit of hand sanding and i reckon it looks fantastic i really like the one camphor laurel strip and the detail where it meets the front section of the rim next i'll firbeglass for coaming but first i need to strengthen it with a fillet of sawdust and epoxy mix it's a tricky bit of fiberglassing but it went pretty well and it's amazing how the cloth can conform to such an odd shape i used the bent acid brush to wet out the underside of the rim   and to push the cloth into place and i also use my fingers too it's messy but it works when the resin has gone off a bit i trim the fiberglass just inside the masking tape there's a few things i need to do before i can join the hull in the deck together the backrest needs some fittings i've made these ones off camera these ones here fit underneath the deck there's a little one here that fits under the back and then one to the backrest itself the backrest will be attached to the kayak with webbing and that goes through this slot i also need a slot at either end which i'm marking out here and then i'll just drill those out and clean the slot up i'll epoxy the inside of the holes and the slot now while i can get to them and then thicken the epoxy up and glue it to the backrest the holes are for shock cord to go through and keep the backrest upright i'll reinforce it a bit more with a piece of fiberglass these brackets are where the webbing gets attached to the kayak that will be fixed with two bolts and to keep the wood completely sealed i'll drill through the center of these resin filled holes the small bracket is for the other end of the shock cord that holds the backrest upright the slots and the holes need cleaning up and then it needs sanding ready for a few coats of resin and varnish but i'll do that later on there's still a few more things i need to do before joining the hull and the deck together and one of those is to shape the feet of the seat to fit the hull i'll do that in place with the sandpaper stuck to the hull itself i've decided to add foot rests now and i don't want to drill through the hull so i'll fix them with these big head bolts they get glued on and then fiberglassed over and they should be plenty strong enough i'm going straight on with the fiberglass while the glue is still wet and to keep the bolts the correct distance apart i've drilled holes in a piece of wood the ends of the boat need strengthening with epoxy this is usually done after the hull and the deck had joined together by standing the kayak upright and pouring in a cup of epoxy i thought i'd try this method that i saw nick schade of guillemot kayaks use i make a dam and then just pour the epoxy in another reason for an end pour is to drill a hole through for a grab rope i wasn't sure if i was going to do that at this point but in case i was i've added black pigment to the epoxy as clear epoxy would let light into the boat in the end i decided not to but if i wanted to i could still do it at a later date i won't fit the footrest now as they'll get in the way while joining the kayak together i'll just have to reach in to fit them i need to shape the end pour so that the deck will fit onto them and trying to keep that a good tight fit as they'll get glued together with thickened epoxy varnishing the inside of the hull and the deck is the last step before joining the two halves together and i gave them three coats this makes them even more watertight and it also prevents the uv light from yellowing the epoxy to protect the fresh varnish i'm using paint is plastic and when it's joined i'll be able to reach in and pull that back out i'll fiberglass the inside seams first so i use reinforced tape on the outside to pull the deck down tightly onto the hull when we did this stage on corin's kayak we had a real wrestle with it but this one went together very easily i'll run masking tape along the seam to catch any resin from the inside and i've positioned the kayak up on its side i need to roll out pre-wetted fiberglass strips along the seam   between the masking tape it looks like a tricky task so fingers crossed it goes okay i've marked a point on the rol l to line it up against the bracket that can be seen here so the ends of the fiberglass will roll out to the correct length at both ends i roll it out as far as i can reach and then after setting up a light so i can see what i'm doing i use a brush on a stick to steer the roll along the seam it's definitely tricky but the method does work i left it an hour or so to tack off and then flipped the kayak over and did the other seam i didn't show it but i did brush on more epoxy over the whole joint i left it overnight to set and then the next morning i removed all the tape next i need to add outer stems at both ends of the kayak to finish them off and add protection i've cut camphor laurel strips and i'll laminate those directly to the kayak after cleaning up the ends with the block plane after the glue is set i shape them to match the form of the hull using a block plane, saw rasp and sandpaper and here's the outer stem at the stern next i need to fiberglass the outer seam and then i'm on the home run with pretty well just finishing to go i need to sand the seam first and while i'm at it i'll sand the whole thing ready for more epoxy i'm taking off all the high spots and also de-glossing the surface for the next coat to bond to i had quite a few comments in the previous video about the amount of fiberglass and epoxy that was used but with the cedar being so thin on a wooden kayak it has to have strength from somewhere so it needs to be fiberglassed and also it makes it watertight i also added a strip of fiberglass over the outer stems and so far along the keel to add more protection where the boat will get some scrapes and some abuse it will need a couple of coats of epoxy to bridge over the seams and the deck will need plenty to bridge over the kumiko i need enough epoxy to sand the whole thing smooth before the next coat of epoxy i'm feathering out the edges of the fiberglass seams to blend them in i start sanding with 80 grit working evenly over the whole kayak trying to get a smooth and even surface it looks pretty good but there was the odd low bit on the deck so i decided to add another coat of epoxy i'm brushing it on pretty thick even though one brush coat isn't actually all that thick and hopefully it will be enough this time as it's fairly well smoothed out already i've decided to wet sand it this time i reckon it's almost as fast as using the sander anyway and there's no dust i start with 120 grit and then go to 180 and finish at 240. i think that's got it so next i'll start varnishing and for that i'm using a marine water-based varnish i've really enjoyed using this varnish so far but as you may be able to see here there's grit all the way through it i needed to wet sand the whole thing again and it turns out the varnish somehow developed that grit itself inside the bottle so for the final coats i had to strain it first i never introduced anything into the bottle i've never poured anything back in there and even when using a new pot and a new brush the grit was still there so i tested it straight from the bottle and it was full of that gritty substance anyway straining it out worked next i fitted the foot rest using stainless steel nuts and a dab of thread locker to prevent them from coming undone i really was at full stretch and i could only just about reach the furthest nuts next i'll fit the seat and to fix it in place i'm going to use this heavy duty velcro i've put a couple of pieces of masking tape on to help center it and after a quick look down the kayak to check i pushed the velcro strips firmly down onto the hull to fit the straps for the backrest i made two of these brackets from micarta which is usually used for knife handles but i thought it would work well here before i put the straps through i'll attach the backrest with some shock cord it needs another piece of shock cord that i've put a loop on the one end and i can use that to tie off and adjust the angle of the backrest and that's it it's been a lot of work but the kayak is complete i'm super happy with how it turned out and if anyone's interested it weighs 15.8 kilograms or just under 35 pounds it's the end of the day and i took a few shots of the finished kayak in the morning i'll put it in the water for its maiden voyage and a massive thanks to nick schade of guillemot kayaks for sharing his knowledge and without that i couldn't have achieved this project i'll put a link to nick's youtube channel in the description and if you have any interest in building a kayak or just watching good videos then you really should check it out we made an early start and got to a local lake just before sunrise it's a very shallow lake with the sand bed and it's ideal for a first paddle i absolutely love it it's been a fantastic project but i have to say i'm looking forward to working on something else and also getting my workshop back to normal let me know what you think of the kayak and hopefully you enjoyed the video if you did please like and subscribe thanks for watching and i'll see you on the next one

Channel: Pask Makes

Views: 541,322

Keywords: paskmakes, pask, pask makes

Id: qPlEr2mtKcA

Length: 46min 7sec (2767 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 07 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/ComfortableAd2617]

It's a beautiful kayak, incredible.

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I don't do wood stuff but do kayak. From the video, it looks like the that kayak is for a light paddle only. That velcroed seat and odd backrest are not particularly functional for a multi-day and I suspect after a few hours you would be very sore or have broken something. The foot pedals will probably fall off with regular use.

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Curious how/why the hull design were selected.