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.

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.