Recent kayak gear DIY projects

Here's a bilge pump, made from about $2 worth of salvaged materials.  The main shaft is made from 1-½" PVC or ABS pipe--I'm not sure which it is--and the other parts are standard PVC fittings.

The pump body, made from 1.5" pipe and fittings.

The inlet valve for the pump is made from a 1 ½" PVC slip-to-threaded adapter from the junk box, a piece of a mountain bike inner tube, plastic mesh (from a craft store), and a plastic retainer thingy from the top of a juice bottle.

The bilge pump inlet valve.

The inlet valve before assembly.

The parts are glued together with Goop, and the assembly seems to work.  I might replace the inner tube rubber with some thin neoprene.

The plunger and the plunger valve.

The plunger is a ½"-diameter acrylic rod that had been hanging around in the junk box for a long time.  The inside end of the rod is attached with a screw to a plastic disc with holes in it, and a rubber washer from the hardware store on top makes it a valve.  It  works, but it seems to me that it needs to be more robust--a fiberglass or phenolic or brass or aluminum (etc.) rod would be less likely to break, and less affected by moisture; the disc ought to be thicker, and more securely attached to the plunger.

Another project is the hand paddle, which will (so rumor says) allow me to to take a photo and maneuver the kayak at the same time--that is, I won't have to try and handle the full-size paddle and the camera both at once.

The nashba hand paddle.

A smashball paddle from the junk store.

I bought a couple of "smashball" paddles from Urban Ore (from which all blessings flow) for $1 apiece, and I cut one down to what seemed like the right size for a hand paddle.  The edges were sanded down and coated with some epoxy that I wanted to use up before it went completely bad (and which, two days later, is hard but still tacky).  The plastic grips were pulled off and replaced with a tight-fitting length of old inner tube, which was glued down at either end with Goop.

The super-cheapskate emergency paddle.

The super-cheap emergency paddle is a thin plywood paddle-ball paddle that might work as a hand paddle for a while: it probably won't stand up to any hard paddling, but might be sufficient for maneuvering.  If it isn't good for either one then I'll be out of  10¢, but I think I can cope.


I began making a sorta-new roof rack and a couple of hatch covers for the Necky Looksha LV kayak that I obtained a few weeks ago...
I'll save those for another post.



Updates: the ABS body of the pump turned out to be not quite round, and so the plunger assembly tended to stick.  I've never got around to finding a different pump body.

The plies on the Nashba paddle's handle began to come apart after months of usage, probably because I hadn't sealed the wood first and it tended to stay wet under the inner-tube part.  I'll try gluing the plies back down with Titebond III or epoxy and sealing with epoxy or something.