The Tyne tandem assembly instructions part one

The is a panoramic view of the assembled hull (without one or two parts), compiled in Photoshop, with the rough spots of the image intact so that it looks like some parts are disjointed. 

The almost-complete hull

It should be clear when putting the hull together how parts are connected, so I won't mention that if it doesn't seem necessary.  Assembly of the stringers and coaming  is a bit confusing, so I'll try to make things clear in the assembly instructions.

Hull parts list:

• four hinged side (gunnel?  upper hull?)  assemblies;

• two hinged floor\keel(\keelson?) assemblies;

• eight stringers total: four are attached at one end to a stem piece, four are loose, and two of the loose stringers have sliding ferrules at one end;

• seven ribs\frames, one with a seat back attached;

• two stem parts--one bow and one stern;

• four side coaming boards and one backboard;

• two deck supporting rails;

•  a seat back supported by the coaming over the center frame

One of the BACK floor boards slides over one of the FRONT floorboards in the middle, so the BACK assembly should probably be the first one in.  I think the assembly goes like this, if we start with the parts labeled BACK:

Unfold and lay out the BACK floor\keel (on the left in the above photo);

Add the stern stem piece--it looks like the bow piece shown on the right in the next photo, and has two stringers attached to it;

The bow assembly, because I don't have a photo of the stern assembly.

Add BACK frames 1-3.  The Folbot Super assembly instruction manual says to leave the parts that correspond to frames BACK 1 and BACK 2 off until the assembly has been stuffed into the skin--I don't know if that will help here or not.

Add two stringers if you have some way to make them stay together--duct tape will work, but take it off again as soon as can or it will leave gummy stuff on the parts.  You don't have to worry about whether to use the dowels with sliding ferrules or not because you can match them up when you assemble the other half.

Stuff the assembly into the skin as far as you can, tugging on the skin and swearing.  Have an assistant climb into the skin and push on the assembly while you shout directions from a safe distance.

Repeat everything with the FRONT assembly.  There will probably be some overlap in the middle when both assemblies are in.

I'll try and finish the rest of the instructions when I actually have enough of the boat repaired to try putting the hull into the skin.

(A note about the coaming parts: they attach to the frames as show in this photo, with the head of the bolt in the cupped slot:

 I don't think they go on until the hull halves has been joined in the skin.  I'll move this note to part two of the instructions if that ever gets done.)

Tyne tandem folding kayak problems and repairs

I think the Tyne tandem folding kayak is somewhat like the Folbot Super.  It's a bit shorter--about 17'--and about as wide (36" or so).  It has wood dowels instead of aluminum tubes for stringers, a rubberized canvas hull (I think) with a canvas deck, and other differences, but I'd guess that when it's assembled it looks much like the Super.

The frame, assembled without the missing parts.  The skin can't be put on until the replacement parts are useable.

I bought a Tyne tandem folder at a garage sale.  It was missing some of the frame parts (including a bulkhead\frame), and had broken parts and a few parts that had plywood delamination.  Previous owners had, apparently, continued to use the boat as problems occurred, sometimes making adequate-at-best repairs when it was absolutely necessary.

Partial guide to terminology and part names.  It's meant for someone else who acquired a Tyne and doesn't quite know what to do with it.  I'm probably the only person who will ever look at this.

 Here are some of the problems the kayak had when I got it, and some of the old repairs.

Broken frame.  The missing wood was replaced with thin garden-variety plywood, and the fittings weren't replaced at all.

Broken side.  The parts weren't glued flush, and a patch of cheap plywood was glued (right on to the varnish) on the outside and seven or eight galvanized screws were added.

Side view of broken side

The old parts and the new replacement wood.  The new part is marine plywood left over from an old project.  It was clamped to the old side so that both could be cut at once and have exactly the same angle for the butt joint.  The holes in the old and new parts will be filled with epoxy.

The side with the old wrecked part cut off.  The bits of plywood that were cut off the replacement wood were glued onto bare wood with waterproof wood glue, and will (I hope) be thin enough to allow the side to flex like it's supposed to.  (I probably should have put them on the outside of the panel.)  Marine epoxy will be used to put the new part on, with a bit of fiberglass on the other side to reinforce the butt joint. 

Broken floor, and a broken stringer.

The plywood that went bad was probably wet for long periods.  Some of it has been replaced with laminated 1/4" white oak until I get some marine plywood.

The bottom of part of the keel\floor.

Plywood removed from under the floor

There are two coaming boards on each side.  The connector shown at the bottom in the next photo joins the forward and after coamings on each side.  I've made a temporary aluminum connector to replace the missing brass (or bronze) one.

Coaming parts.  The parts on the right are missing from the coaming on the left.

Coaming back right and back left parts.

Old and new coaming boards and couplers.  The new parts still need some work.

Replacement center rib.  This is probably supposed to have a seat back on it.  For now it's made from good exterior plywood sealed with epoxy.

By the way, here are a few places to get supplies for a project boat in my area (west Contra Costa County, California):

• MacBeath Hardwoods in Berkeley (and San Jose, San Francisco, and elsewhere) has marine plywood and every other kind of wood, and woodworking supplies.  They're right across the street from
• Urban Ore, which can be a good place to find used things that can be cut up or re-purposed.  At various times I've found very cheap used lumber for stands and temporary structures, stainless steel and brass hardware (sometimes in unopened packages), aluminum tubing, hardwoods (including walnut, cherry, maple, rosewood [once], and tropical woods that I couldn't identify), shock cord, nylon webbing, Yakima roof racks, a canoe paddle, boardsailing equipment, wheels for a kayak cart, an unused spray skirt, and loads of other things.  Sometimes you can go there and find nothing at all useful, and sometimes you can actually find the thing you were looking for.  Take some time and get your hands dirty and you'll probably be much more successful.

• For new boat building and maintenance supplies go to Whale Point Marine and Hardware in Richmond.  They have regular Ace hardware stuff, and they have almost anything West Marine has, including marine-grade stainless steel fasteners, and stuff WM doesn't have, and at more reasonable prices than WM.  There's a West Marine a couple of blocks away if you want to do a shop-to-shop comparison.

• Eagle Marine in Martinez doesn't have nearly as much good stuff as WM and Whale Point M&H, but they have epoxy, fiberglass cloth (ask someone behind the counter), and other useful stuff.  (If you're there on a Saturday morning you might be able to see the guys who are restoring Joe DiMaggio's old Chris Craft in a nearby building.)

• The reuse room at the Contra Costa Household Hazardous Waste Collection Facility in Martinez has gallons of paint, lots of wood stain, and I've found paint thinner, spar varnish, teak oil, and other useful stuff--and it's free.  You probably won't find the good stuff if you just go once, and the stuff you take may turn out to be useless, but if your budget is tight then you need to check it out.

I'll add to this post when I get more of the wood parts and metal fittings done, and get the photos taken.  I might make a new light(er)weight skin for the Tyne if I can ever get the right material for cheap.

More Folbot notes - seats, longerons, plywood

The seats were modified by some prior owner, maybe because they wore out or mildewed.  The renovated seats have that terrible cheesy open-cell yellow foam rubber--the stuff that absorbs water like a sponge.  A seat that doubles as a sponge doesn't seem like a terrific innovation to me; sitting down on a seat with an unexpectedly soaked cushion is only fun for the spectators, not for the poor dork who has to use the seat.

The just-plain-stupid foam cushion in one of the Folbot's seats.

The seat has a passable (but poorly glued on) vinyl cover, so what it needs now is some kind of closed-cell, durable, cushiony stuffing that will remain buoyant in all circumstances.  Some PFDs--maybe all of them, who knows--have sheets of white closed-cell plastic foam inside, and it seems like this stuff could be cut and glued to make a passable seat cushion.  Another alternative would be to use pool noodles or pipe insulation, maybe cut into a bundle of strips to make the seat less lumpy.

Foam sheet from a PFD.

PeteS on the Folbot forum suggested a boat cushion--which could be a Type IV PFD, which is a useful thing to have on any boat.  It could be held in place over the plywood seat bottom with (for instance) some simple clips on shock cord, in such a way that it could be easily and quickly detached if necessary.

The bottom of the seat and the brace.

I think the seat plywood is original, and I'm not sure about the braces.  If the brace is original, it may have come off when the glue failed from old age--which is a problem that affects the paddles and the boat's wood frame--and the screws pulled out of the plywood.

The bow assembly.

The longerons are the aluminum tubes that run the length of the hull and support the skin and the sides of the deck.  The flattened ends of the middle longerons are cracked where they attach to the bow and stern assemblies, maybe because they need to be shortened; page two of the Folbot Super assembly manual at John Burch's site says something about shortening the tubes if they are so long that they aren't in contact with all the frames.

The forward end of a middle longeron from the bow assembly.

I suppose the best solution would be to replaces the tubes; the next best would probably be to weld the crack shut.  I don't consider replacement an option, and I don't know how to weld (yet), so I sanded the cracked area inside and out and put epoxy putty around both sides of each crack in the forward tubes.  When I get around to the stern tubes I'll clean with a solvent after sanding and then work some liquid marine epoxy into the crack and add the putty when that's dry.  Wrapping the tube end with fiberglass tape and epoxy might be another option if it doesn't add too much bulk to the tube.

The longerons are supported at the bow and stern by bolts that runs thru the wood and thru the tubes. Rather than try to shorten the tubes I might try move the hole forward by drilling a new hole for the bolt a bit forward of the old one at the bow, and epoxying a hardwood dowel into the old hole to fill it.  If that doesn't seem to make it harder to get the bow into the skin, and if the tubes are still too long, I could try the same thing at the stern.  This trick is reversible--the old holes can be drilled out and the new ones filled--but it would be harder to lengthen a shortened tube.

The edges of the tube at the flattened end seems a bit sharp, and I'm going to sand these down so they won't be able to gouge the inside of the skin.  It seems to me that if the tube ends had a slick surface that didn't cause friction with the skin then assembly might be just a bit easier--but maybe not enough to justify the effort.  Or maybe it would help a lot; I'll just have to try it to find out.

The end of the stern assembly. 

The stern assembly looks like the bow assembly (pictured above).  There's a rotten spot on the stern, maybe from a damp garage floor.  In the lower left you can sort of see where the lamination of the plywood is uneven.  I think that this is caused because wood shrinks as it ages less in the direction parallel to the grain than it does perpendicular to the grain, and since the grain of each ply in the plywood is at right angles (or at least at a different angle) to the grain in the surrounding plies, the odd plies are either higher or lower than the even plies.

I suppose the edges could be filled with epoxy instead of being sanded down and then sealed with epoxy or oil or whatever.  They ought to be sanded when the wood is re-varnished every n years anyhow--plywood edges can look really good if they're sanded properly before being finished. If the boat's skin has shrunk (I hear that's a common problem) then sanding the edges, and some extra off of the foremost and aft-most extremes, should be mandatory.

The rotten spot ought to be cut out and replaced, preferably with some more marine plywood, since it looks too deep to just sand away.  It would be nice to have some kind of abrasion-resistant patch under the ends of the longerons so that the varnish wouldn't be scraped away.  (Or maybe the longerons could be fixed so they don't scrape.)

Folbot Super paddle repair notes

I'm blogging my notes in case they're any use to someone else who's got an old Folbot to fix up.  I'll blog repair notes for the Tyne tandem folder when I remember to take some photos. 

The Folbot paddles.

 I got two two-part kayak paddles with the Folbot.

One paddle blade was beginning to separate from its shaft, making that paddle unusable.  Both paddles have chipped varnish and some mildew stains on the wood.  Each blade has a thin aluminum sheath folded onto and riveted to the end, and these are corroded inside and out, sometimes to the point that the rivets are beginning to fall apart.

The aluminum sheath on the end of the paddle blade.

I removed the partially-detached blade by using a heat gun to to warm up the glue as I pulled the blade away from the shaft.  I think the other three blades will have to be re-glued to the shafts so that they don't fail at some inconvenient time. 

The cleaned and partially sanded blade.

The aluminum sheath.

The detached blade minus its sheath.  You can see a little of the old glue where the shaft was.

I removed the sheath from the loose blade by breaking off parts of the rivets with pliers, drilling out the shafts as needed, and so on.  I scrubbed the blade with a nylon brush and water to get as much of the white corrosion gunk off as I could, then began sanding to get at the rest of it.

The blade is going glued back on to the shaft once the end has been sanded to remove the varnish.  I'm going to use epoxy (mixed with dark sawdust) to fill the holes and the small cracks between the holes and the blade end (probably) wrap the blade and shaft ends with fiberglass tape.  The blade will be re-varnished as needed once the shaft is ready to be varnished.

Fiberglass tape.  This seems to be easier to work with than strips of fiberglass cloth, which can fray badly at the edges and make a mess if you aren't careful when you are adding the epoxy.

 The varnish on the shaft is chipped and damaged in places, especially at the end of the ferrule.  I took the ferrule off to make it easier to sand off the varnish.  The ferrule is held on with a pin and by the indentation where the pin was driven in.  I pulled the pin in the photo out with my fingernails and some needle-nose pliers and then I drilled out the hole to remove the indentation so that I could pull the ferrule off.  I could use a brass or stainless flathead screw when I put the ferrule back on--maybe with some kind of coating to keep the dissimilar metals from corroding--or I could drill a new hole for the pin and pound it back in, then fill the old hole with epoxy.

The inside end of the shaft and its bronze ferrule and retaining pin.

I'll probably re-varnish the shaft before I glue the blade back on--that might make it easier to clean up the excess glue.

I'll post some notes about minor problems with the tubes, the wood frame parts, and the seats another time, and I might post about the carry bags and other trivial stuff if it seems like there is any interest.

Folbot Super

This is another folding kayak from a garage sale. It may have been made in the '70's; it's in good condition and only needs minor repairs.

Parts that might help identify the year or decade when the boat was made.  The striped material is a sample of the vinyl used on the Folbot's deck.

One of the paddles.  The vinyl covers on the paddle blades are mildewed and stuck to the blades, and the aluminum strips at the end of the blades are corroded.  The paddle were probably left leaning upright in a garage or a shed where  the ends of the paddle blades could become wet or damp.  I may replace the aluminum with a fiberglass strip, and do some refinishing.

The boat needs a few minor repairs, but it's complete and in good condition.  Some of the wood parts ought to be refinished, and everything needs to be cleaned, but I may wait to do most of that stuff until the boat's had its sea trial (and I'll need to find a volunteer to man the second paddle for that).

The Folbot, set up without the seats or the pads for the back rests.

Folding kayak from salvaged materials

I was collecting broken windsurfing booms and other unwanted things made with aluminum tubing so I could make some kayak carts.  After a while I realized that I might be able to collect enough material to make a folding aluminum kayak similar to the ones at Yostwerks --the Sea Otter, for instance.

I think that I currently have enough tubing--if I include the curved parts of the booms--to make a 15' boat. 

Salvaged tubing from windsurfing booms.

Above is a photo (taken in very bad light) of some of the stuff I've collected so far.  On the far right and the far left, respectively, are a carbon fiber boom and a carbon fiber paddle; these would be for the middle and one end of the keel.  There are two 'orphans,' the broken-off parts of a boom set (that I don't have the rest of), and one of these would form the rest of the keel.

There are two complete pairs of booms (including the sliding\adjustable part that attaches to the clew of the sail), and these would be for the gunnels.  I have three lengths of 5' by 1" tubing, and the excess tubing from the keel and gunnels construction, to make a pair of chines.

The bulkheads are going to be made from preformed aluminum parts from a walker and from another thing with a similar shape that I rescued from a dumpster.  (Update: the bulkhead frames at the ends will be made with 1/2" HDPE from the scrap bin at TAP Plastics, and the others will be made from white oak.)  These will take some finagling, but they ought to work.  The cockpit could be the hardest part.  I'm going to try bending some 3/4" tubing from crutches (I have several salvaged pairs of these), and if I can't make that work I'll use wood or make an open-style cockpit.

So, I've got all this stuff... and what's stopping me from starting construction of the frame is the design.  I don't know if I can use one of Tom Yost's designs as-is because I want to include the curved parts of the booms in the design, and Tom's designs use straight tubing with a smaller diameter.  I don't think the tubing I'm using will bend easily enough to be used for one of the Yostwerks' boats.

I'm stuck for now, but eventually I'll come up with a plan that I think is adequate and start cutting stuff up, and if I get that done (without a strongback, since I don't have the materials or budget to build one) I'll start think about how I'm going to skin the boat.

Update:  I got some 7' ipe  deck planks to make a strongback from, but I'm still stalled until I can clear away enough junk to have room to set up the strongback.  I found a possible source for skin material, but I haven't been able to get it home from the junk store.

Update:  I no longer have a place to set up a strongback, so this project has been stalled for months.  I have a set of frames for a Sea Tour 15, but not much else is done.

Project boats

I'm outfitting an old fiberglass river kayak for flat water.  This boat's a lot like the one that I used for a couple of years before I got the Necky Looksha Sport LV, so I didn't have any reservations about adopting it.

The red river kayak

I got this as an almost-bare hull (it had foot pedals) and I added deck bungees fore and aft of the cockpit, a temporary seat made from an old PFD, a temporary strap-in skeg, carry handles at the bow and stern, and shock cord (from a ruined tent fly) to keep the handles from flopping around.

Deck rigging and the temporary seat

Grab handle on the bow

I also added grab lines along the gunnels.  The forward ends are connected with the same bolts that anchor the foot pedals, and the after ends are just tied around the stern.  I plan to eventually replace the lines (which are currently cheap braided plastic rope from Harbor Freight) and add some kind of anchor points for the stern end of the lines.

Stern rigging

There are holes thru the bow and stern ends for lines to use for carrying the boat.  I used some thin cord thru these holes to anchor the carrying handles because I wasn't able to disassemble the handles and run the attached cords thru the holes in the boat.  This arrangement seems to work--for now.  Like everything but the deck bungees this is likely to be temporary.

The kayak before its first sea trial.

The kayak on the Carquinez Strait.

The Tyne folding kayak

I bought a Tyne wooden-frame folding kayak at a garage sale a couple of months ago.  (The boat was made be Tyne Canoes Ltd., or Tyne Folding Boats Ltd.--I don't know which is correct yet.)  The seller mentioned that it needed work, but neglected to mention that one of the bulkheads was missing.  I've managed to replace or repair many of the parts (both wood parts and brass parts; some of the new parts need more work), and because I was sufficiently distracted by the missing or broken things I didn't realize that the center bulkhead was missing altogether.  I can make a replacement bulkhead, but after having done the rest of the repairs, and thinking I was almost done, finding that a major part of the frame was missing has killed my enthusiasm for the project.  If you want to buy a project boat (wood frame and hypalon skin, for what it cost me so far), let me know.

Note, November 2012:  I bought a Folbot Super at another garage sale.  It's similar to the Tyne, but newer, and complete as-is, so that it's not really a project boat.  I'm probably going to sell one or the other of them if I ever finish making parts for the Tyne and get it on the water.