A canoe cart, and more kayak carts

I've started putting together a cart for the Navarro canoe.  It's made with the wheels and part of the frame from a jogging stroller.  The finished cart will have an aluminum frame that can be broken down to be stored in the canoe or a car.  The wheels have a mechanism that makes them easily detachable, so the space needed to store the parts just needs to be a bit more than the size of the two wheels.

I might also want the width of the cart frame to be adjustable so that the frame can be set on the gunnels and support a tent or tarp over the canoe, so that I can sleep in the canoe and not have to find dry land to camp on--and I guess the frame could support the canoe so that it acts as a tent on dry land...these ideas still need some work.

I'm going to have to test to see how much weight the wheels and frame will support; they may not be up to the job.

The black parts are the cart's frame, from the aluminum frame of a jogging stroller.  The frame was cut in the middle so that a length of aluminum tubing could be added.  The bushings are for the wheel axles, and the kickstand was part of the stroller.

The wheel bushings were welded to the aluminum-tubing frame, but the tubing had broken around each bushing so that the axles were only supported by a plastic casing around the bushings.  PVC couplers were epoxied into the tubes and cut away enough that the bushing and the broken tubing could be epoxied back into its original position to both the tubes and to the couplers.  The PVC provides extra support for the bushings on the inside of the tubes, and fiberglass, steel wire, and\or steel hose clamps will be used to reinforce the outside.

This is a wheel attached to the frame.

The finished cart will look something like this, probably with another cross piece near the axles.  The tube in the middle will be detachable at each end so that the cart can be broken down, and so that a different length of tubing can be used if I want to use the the cart for a kayak or for gear instead of for the canoe.

The new kayak cart will be made from an aluminum golf bag cart.  I don't really need another kayak cart, but the golf cart was only $2, so it was a must-have purchase.  Once it's finished I can sell or give away the steel-frame cart I've been using, or make it a cart for camping gear.

Part of an aluminum-frame golf cart.  The object is to make a simple folding frame that can be stored in a kayak, so the unnecessary parts were removed, and part of the long center tube will be cut off.  The wheels are detachable.  The yellow strips are cut from fiberglass battens, and will be replaced with something sturdier.

And finally, here's a photo of the old kayak cart in action at Ferry Point in Richmond.

The Necky Looksha Sport LV on the cart on the beach at the Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline in Richmond.

The old steel-framed cart.  Even tho the wheels are detachable, it's too big to fit into the aft compartment of the kayak.  The new cart will have a simplified folding mechanism, which ought to reduce the weight and size considerably, although it will be more difficult to fold and unfold.  I suppose I could make a very simple, small, and lightweight non-folding frame, but that would be boring.

Edit, Dec. 2014: the steel-frame cart was stolen out of my car several weeks ago.  If you know the whereabouts of the cart please let me know; and in the meantime, if you can determine that the person in possession of the cart was the person (or one of the people) who broke the lock on the passenger door, ransacked my car (leaving everything on the street or sidewalk), and stole the cart, please feel free to put on a heavy steel-toed boot, and give the slimy degenerate a good hard kick to the crotch - in a tactful way, of course.  Alternately, you can inform the owner of the BMW that the same people damaged of the their whereabouts - I'm sure he's anxious to talk to them.

Kayak camera stand

This is a homemade camera stand made from leftover stuff from other projects.  I plan to use it for shooting video with a compact camera while paddling the kayak.

It's made to be inexpensive and easy to assemble, with measuring, cutting, and drilling all kept to a minimum (I didn't feel like trying to clear off my workbench).  The camera can held horizontally (in landscape position) or vertically (portrait position) and can be adjusted to point left and right, and tilted up and down.  The stand will also float if it has to.

The bare PVC camera stand.

The material is 3/4" PVC pipe and PVC fittings (all available at Home Depot, OSH, etc.), a nylon screw, neoprene scraps, and rubbery plastic foam packing stuff.  The pipe and fittings would be glued with PVC cement if I had any--I'm going to use Plumber's Goop instead.

The stand is held in place by the forward deck rigging, or by a bungee cord (the red one in the photos), or both.  The camera is attached to an adapter, a ¾"-½" PVC reducer bushing, which is shoved into the top or side of the uppermost PVC tee fitting, as shown in the photos.

The stand under the deck rigging with the camera held vertically.

The open hole in the upright (uppermost) tee has a plug in it to keep water out.  Neither the adapter or the plug is fixed in place--they should be pushed into the tee with enough force that they'll stay put, and loosely enough that they can be removed by hand.  I suppose they could be kept in place with hitch pins in rough conditions.

The stand with the camera held horizontally.

The camera is attached to the adapterwith a 1/4" nylon screw.  I could have used a plug or an end cap instead of the bushing to make the adapter, or I could screw the camera onto a tee (and move the tee to change the camera's position).  I used the bushing because I couldn't find a plug or a cap.

The camera attached to the PVC adapter.

The thing on the end of the adapter is a spacer for the screw, a sort of a thick rubber washer that was meant to be put on the bottom of a small appliance.  It's not necessary--I used it because it was handy.  The black stuff is scrap neoprene, and isn't necessary or even, as it turns out, a good idea.  Eventually I'll find some kind of thin rubbery gasket for the top of the adapter, and a nylon or stainless steel washer for the bottom, and I'll cut the screw to the correct length.

Plugs and the camera-to-stand adapter.

The 3/4" PVC pipe is either the thick-walled or thin-walled stuff, depending on what was handy.  It's probably a good idea to use the thicker pipe since the thin pipe can break.

The pipe is plugged at one or both ends with some expanded rubbery plastic packing foam, which is sealed with RTV silicone.  These plugs are the "bulkheads" that keep the stand from filling with water (and possibly sinking) if it gets broken.

The pipe (on the right) plugged with foam.

I'm going to post the other details later.

10 minute loading zone, new camera bag

It seems like the 10-minute loading zone at Eckley pier is popular with people who can't tell time, but maybe they are just so baffled by the twin concepts of "10-minute parking" and "loading zone" that they can't cope - the driver of the car in the picture was so confused that he wasn't able to navigate between the parallel white lines, and apparently wasn't able to find the car again once he had left it.

There's usually a place to park in spite of all that.

 

Parking for the intellectually challenged.

New camera bag.

The (supposedly) waterproof camera bag that I've been using keeps the camera dry in the kayak, but water on the bag over the camera's lens messes up the photos, and there's never anything dry to wipe the water off with. 

The new (actually old, but unused) Aquapak waterproof camera bag has a lens cap thingy, so that the part of the bag that covers the lens isn't constantly wet - if you remember to snap it completely shut after each time you use it, and you don't drop the camera in the water, and the camera doesn't get splashed when you're taking a shot; you also have to remember to hold the cover back against the front of the bag.

The old camera bag.

The best way to shoot from the kayak, it turns out, is to take the camera out of the bag when it's safe to do so, and put it back in when it's not.  This is at least as much a pain in the keister as shooting with the camera in the bag, but the images tend to be better this way.

Kayak cart 2.2

The kayak cart might finally be ready to take on the dirt trail at Lone Tree Point.

The unfolded kayak cart

 The kayak now stays put relative to the cart, and the cart still folds and fits easily in the car.

The folded kayak cart

 Total cost: about $10.  The original cart cost $5 at Urban Ore, the new bungees cost $4 (some cheap dips**t stole the old ones off the cart while it was on the beach), and the wood scraps, duct tape, and foam thingies probably cost around a buck.

Edit, 10\8\11:  The cart has been successfully tested on a sandy beach, on a gravelly beach, and on the tiny steep rocky weedy trail between the pier and the beach at Eckley.

5\11\12:  I've made a kayak cart for camping, and details are at http://tedhamiter.blogspot.com/2012/05/stowable-kayak-cart.html.

A really cheap kayak cart

A quick google of "kayak cart" shows that the cheapest one cost $60, and most of them are over $100 - so forget that. I decided to make my own, and I did, and that's it in the photo.

The construction should be almost self-explanatory: a pair of training wheels from Thrifttown ($1) are bolted onto PVC t-connectors, and the rest is made from tees and thick-walled PVC pipe, and a "pool noodle." If it seems like it needs a stronger frame I'll add another crosswise pipe to it.

Improvements: I suppose the tees can be joined to the pipe sections with clevis pins to make a cart that can be disassembled. If the wheels were closer together then the thing could be turned upside-down and used to load the kayak onto the car. Bigger wheels would make the cart more usable on lawns, beaches, and gravel roads, but as it is it's only useful on hard, flat surfaces.

Materials:

• training wheels from the thrift store or flea market
• four 3/4" PVC tees
• one pair each of 3/4" x #14 machine screws, nuts, and washers
• glue (I used Plumber's Goop), clevis pins, or sheet metal screws to join the PVC parts
• pipe insulation, pool noodle, or other foamy cushioning thinger

The cost so far for the parts that didn't just come out of a junk box (that means the training wheels and the pool noodle) is about $2.25.


Edit, October '11:  This thing is usable, but it really needs to be sturdier, and the padded parts should be farther apart.  PVC cement would be best for permanently joining the PVC pipe and couplings, but I don't like to buy that stuff--most of it ends up sitting in the can until it goes bad.

December 2012:  If you make one of these, plan to make a better one and keep your eye out for a bigger pair of wheels and some aluminum tubing from an old pair of crutches or something.  A jogging stroller with an aluminum frame is a good source of parts.