I made a two-piece paddle back when I got my first kayak...
The closet-pole-and-plywood paddle.
Two-piece wood paddle.
I had some marine plywood leftovers from an old project, and I traced the blades from a Sevlor paddle onto a couple of those and cut out the blades, as seen in the photos. The Sevlor was the only paddle I had owned, back then, and I really didn't know what I was doing. Half of the original closet rod had to be thrown out, and the new rod doesn't seem to match the old one, so the paddle is probably unbalanced as-is.
I never finished fitting the both parts to the ferrule, so the paddle is unfinished and has never been used. The current plan is to make the blades narrower, thin the shafts a bit, and reduce the overall length. The blades are epoxied to the shafts, but I put stainless screws in to keep the blades firmly attached, and I guess I can get rid of those.
The plywood is discolored after being in a sometimes damp storeroom for several years.
The aluminum ferrule, which isn't finished either.
Paddle two is a homemade greenland paddle. It's made with redwood from the local big-box home improvement store, and some walnut, maple, and birch scraps that had been hanging around. I had some small teak scraps that went on the tips. This one wasn't finished either, since I lost my workspace before I got around to doing the final shaping and putting on a finish.
Greenland paddle. Looks nice, but I think I used too much hardwood. I'm going to try and thin it carefully to make it light without being flimsy.
The homemade GP, still unfinished. This was originally going to be a two-piece paddle, but I changed my mind, and ended up with a really ugly scarf joint in the middle of the shaft.
I made these paddles without much woodworking experience to draw on, using ordinary hand tools for most of the work, in cramped conditions, so nothing was done in an afternoon, or even overnight, and neither paddle is likely to be finished soon.
Another incomplete paddle. If I ever have a real workbench again then maybe I'll finish shaping it and put some kind of finish on it, but I don't think I'll bother to finish this project until I get the canoe completely repaired.
Cedar, white pine or yellow pine, poplar, and I-forget-what-else, all salvaged.
When I got my first kayak I tried making a spray skirt, even tho I really had no idea what I was doing, and I started making a homemade wood paddle, just for the sake of doing it, I guess. I had only a slightly better idea of how to make a paddle than I had of how to make a spray skirt.
The shafts are from closet poles, and are probably douglas fir. The blades are from marine plywood left over from an old project, and the blades' shape was traced from a cheap aluminum paddle. The blades are epoxied to the shafts, and have a few stainless wood screws as well. A length of aluminum tubing from an old paddle if fitted to the end of one shaft so that I'd have a two-part paddle. The wood finish is tung oil, and there's epoxy on the blade tips.
Although I started it a few years ago it's never been completed. The shafts ought to be thinned, and maybe the blades should be reshaped, and I don't want to bother with it.
The back of one paddle blade.
The unfinished wood paddle.
The aluminum tubing joint thing. The inner-tube cover was meant to retain a pin or clip that would hold the other shaft in.
The marine ply I used was old and stained, but doesn't look too bad.
I started making a greenland paddle just so I could try using one when I was finished. I used maple, poplar, walnut, and teak scraps that were already hanging around, but next time I won't use as much hardwood. The redwood was from a local home-improvement place.
This paddle (like the other one) gets put aside for long periods, and probably won't be done anytime soon.
Ugly scarf joint. If the paddle ever gets done I might put
something on the middle of the shaft to hide it.
The homemade spray skirt was put aside when I got a nylon touring skirt, and I've been waiting for another old wetsuit to come along so I'll have enough material to finish the waist.
Homemade spray skirt (with a too-small tunnel) that came with my first hard-shell kayak.
Homemade, still unfinished, inside-out spray skirt made from an old wetsuit.
The camera stand should be plugged with some kind of closed cell foam so it will float. I'll probably use some foam sheets from an old life jacket for that, and then test it to see if it's buoyant enough to keep the camera from sinking. If it isn't I can add foam to the outside of the stand, or put the camera PFD on the camera's lanyard.
The steel spring in the cheap plastic C-clamp will probably be ruined by salt exposure, but the clamp was already broken, so I don't really care. The camera will be closer to the clamp (and so a bit less prone to going out of alignment) when I find a stainless or nylon screw the right length. (And a retaining clip to keep the screw from falling out.)
I could also put the bilge pump on the deck forward of the cockpit, and clamp the camera to that instead of using a stand. I think the convenience of using the stand will offset the annoyance of having extra gear, and the camera won't be in the way if I need the pump.
Camera, clamp, and PVC stand.
By having the camera mounted on the clamp I can also clamp it to the end of
the paddle and use it for self-portraits at more than arm's length.
And there's other stuff that I just never bother to write up, like the kayak seat made from an old PFD, the Seascape .5 project boat, canoe repairs, the folding kayak project, and re-purposed gear. Is anyone else interested in that?
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.
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.
The kayak cart is beginning to look like a small boat trailer.
This is the latest version of the same golf-bag cart that I've been using for a couple of years. Now it has scrap wood supports made to fit the bottom of the kayak, bike-tire friction pads, wooden cleats, and nylon cord loops to hook bungees onto. It seems to be easier to use this way, although it's heavier and bulkier than before.
The long handle is more of a nuisance than a help so I'm going to cut that down next, or modify it so that it doesn't drag on the ground when I'm trying to navigate the hill next to the beach at Eckley.
This is a kayak cart that can be broken down and stored in the kayak. Most of the parts are from a junk store (but can be replaced with off-the-shelf hardware, if necessary), and most of the pieces will float (once the internal foam plugs are added).
The cart was made with common hand tools--a hand drill, a coping saw, a file, scissors, a utility knife, various clamps, and a couple more that I can't think of right now. The materials are 3/4" and 1" PVC pipe and fittings, inner tubes, a couple of plastic wheels, a fiberglass tent pole, a skinny fiberglass rod, rubber bands, and a few other bits and pieces.
The cart was constructed to fit snugly on either end of my kayak. The cart's shape was determined in part by the curved PVC conduit pieces that I found at Urban Ore. I used ¾" PVC tees and 1" tees for most of the rest of it because it turned out that ¾" parts fit snugly into 1" parts. Some of the parts are skinned with bicycle inner tubes so that the boat won't slide off the cart, and so that the connecting pins are held in place by the inner tubes, and because I thought it looked kinda cool.
In the above image you can see the tent-pole pins that keep two 3/4" tees connected to two 1" tees. The pins are drilled so that they can be leashed to the cart, and some vinyl tubing was forced onto one end of each pin to make it easier to pull the pins out. The other connecting pins are pushed under the blue rubber bands for storage.
The cart in a nylon bag. It fits thru the hatch (on the left) even tho it looks too bulky.
Everything is stored in a nylon ditty-bag when the cart is disassembled, and it all fits under the rear deck--although it takes up more room than I expected, and I might end up lashing the cart's frame to the bow or the stern so that I'll have room in the aft compartment for camping gear.
The cart seen head-on. The thick part right in the middle is pipe insulation.
The wheels have plastic bushings and plain-steels bolts for axles. I think the wheels might be improved by gluing some pipe insulation around the circumference, and then gluing shortened bike tires over that, so that the tires will be wider and get better traction, but I don't know if I'll ever bother to do that.
I'll post more details (although most of them aren't obvious from the photos) when I've got the necessary photos, and if it seems like anyone ever looks at this page
I wanted to keep the kayak from sliding on the roof rack, and I wanted to make it easier to tie down two kayaks--if I ever had a chance to do that--so I tried a modified bar on my Yakima rack.
The roof rack modified for the kayak.
All of the wood is either fir or pine, some of which was already hanging around, and a couple of pieces from the cull bin at Home Depot. The horizontal pad is pipe insulation glued on with Goop; I don't expect this to last a long time, since the insulation isn't all that tough and the Goop-to-wood adhesion doesn't seem to be very good. The vertical pad--not really a pad, but a high-friction surface to make the kayak stay put--in the middle is rubber from an inner tube, glued on with Titebond II.
The two clips to the right of the vertical part are PVC conduit brackets, cut and then melted slightly with a heat gun, that ought to be able to clamp a one-piece paddle to the rack.
The thing on the left side is removable. It was meant to be a load stop, and to provide a place to wrap the lashing straps. I haven't used it yet, since I haven't come up with a convenient way to lock it onto the load bar.
The kayak has a hatch aft of the cockpit, but there was no hatch cover, and I couldn't find a replacement.
Hatch cover number one.
The inside of cover #1.
The first hatch cover was made from an exercise ball that I bought at Urban Ore to make into a flotation bag. It has a skinny inner tube glued into the rim of the cover; the tube was cut to a bit more than the circumference of the hatch, one end was glued shut, and the other end has an NRS air valve. (The valve is glued into a piece of vinyl tubing, which is jammed onto a PVC hose barb, which is glued to the end of the inner tube.)
The idea is that when the inner tube is inflated the cover tightens around the hatch rim and seals it. It seems to work, but the tube has a slow leak and the cover becomes loose after a few minutes.
I made a second cover from part of an air mattress that I had cut up to make a flotation bag.
The second cover on the hatch.
The inside, with a temporary coroplast insert.
It has another inner tube glued into it, and this time I checked the tube carefully for leaks first. It still needs a valve (the white thing on the tube is a hose clamp that doesn't work too well), and the edges have been left untrimmed to make it easier to wrap a bungee cord around it as a temporary fix.
(Update, October 2012: The hatch cover I've been using the last few months is a sheet of 1/4" marine plywood shaped to the hatch and covered with a rubbery plastic material that's held on with a a loop of elastic cord around the outside. This has an 8" plastic deck plate in the middle, which makes it easy to get stuff out of the hatch from the cockpit without removing the whole cover.
This setup is heavy [and kind of ugly] and I'm thinking of making a fiberglass cover to replace the plywood, and adding a fiberglass rim to it to secure the rubbery material, which is difficult to glue to anything.)
(Later update: a fiberglass cover would have been fairly easy to do, maybe with part of a refrigerator door gasket, or a car door gasket, to make it somewhat water tight. I don't really like working with epoxy and fiberglass, so I might try a neoprene cover made the same way as a neoprene spray skirt. I can document and post it here if I think there's any interest.)
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.
The stand is designed to use parts that are already available at home. Using more or fewer of the commonly available PVC fittings from the hardware store, the design could be made simpler or more complex, and there are probably hundreds of variations on this design that will work. And with extra parts, I could add a paddle rest, for instance, or a cup holder, or a small water cannon (connected to the bilge pump), or a soap bubble generator, or a beer dispenser (since the white PVC is food-safe), or some kind of Rube-Goldberg contraption that's completely impractical but looks cool.
The two tees in the center\right in the photo and the pipe that joins them aren't going to be glued. The tees have to be able to rotate to adjust the camera's position. I expect to be able to remember to check the stand when I adjust it to make sure the upright tee is sufficiently tight. The parts could be joined internally or externally (with elastic cord, thick string, whatever) to make sure it all doesn't come apart at some inappropriate time.
The latest stand with the invisible camera tilted up.
The stand in the above photo has a glued crosspiece to keep the two halves from separating. The end caps (on the left side) are there because using caps was easier than gluing foam into the ends of the fittings. A pair of right-angle elbow fittings would have worked better, but I didn't have any extras to use.
The right-angle elbow fittings on the aft end of the stand (near the cockpit) are there to raise it enough that the lower center tee isn't resting on the lengthwise ridge on my kayak's deck, which would keep the thing from being level.
The stand on the kayak.
The plug has been improved slightly: a wide, small diameter rubber band (from a bunch of broccoli) is wrapped around the lip on the outside end of the plug (it probably should be glued on), which makes it a lot easier to grip with wet hands. Something like the cap of an aspirin bottle, or some other plastic disk with knurled edges, glued onto the end might serve the same purpose.
On the adapter, the nylon screw is pushed thru a tight-fitting rubber bumper, which provides a good grip for putting the screw into the camera. A wing nut secured with a regular nut would also work. There's a nylon washer between the bumper and the bushing so the screw can be turned without turning the adapter. The inside of the bushing is filled with neoprene and sealed with RTV to keep water out, and there's a nut on the screw to keep it from sliding out of the adapter.
The plug and the adapter.
On top of the bushing is a rubber gasket that I found in my toolbox--it provides a much better grip on the bushing. There's a rubber washer at the end, which fits tightly over the end of the screw so that it won't fall off when I'm not looking.
The camera-to-stand adapter, and the tee plug.
The adapter works pretty well: there's enough friction to keep camera from twisting on the adapter when it's help sideways, but not so much that the camera can't easily be turned by hand. The bumper makes it easy to take the adapter on or off the camera with wet hands, and the rubber gasket makes it easier to get out of the tee.
The stand worked pretty well on it's trial run. I made some changes to the plug and adapter (as above), and I'll probably leave it at that.
A still shot with the Optio WP on the camera stand.
I'm going to upload a few trial (and low-quality) videos to youtube, like this one:
