Construction techniques for old kayaks?

[Mohan Pakkurti]

hi!

I am curious to read about how Kayaks were built before the advent of the strip plank epoxy techniques. Does anyone have any references that you can point me to, to read more about this? More details about the construction the better

Thanks

Mohan

[nordvindcrew]

there were many plans in old magazines like Popular Mechanics for plywood canoes and kayaks. the other alternative is to go back to fabric on frame construction. Robert Morris has a book that is sold in wooden boat magazine. I bought it and built a 1/4 scale model with good success with intention to build the full size (20' ) version this fall or winter. look for free plans on Google and You'll find some of what you are looking for

[ancient kayaker]

There are a lot of good books and a lot of old techniques. By, old, I'm assuming you mean 19th century and older. here's what I know about canoes. You can probably get more good information on older canoe building methods by giving the following terms into your favourite search engine:

dugout
birchbark
wide board and batten
double cedar
cedar rib
canvas
cedar strip *
lapstrake *

The dugout is a far more sophisticated craft than most people realise, being more familiar with roughly scraped out tree trunks from the Amazon. North American dugouts were incredibly elegant in shape and building technique (the West Coast canadian dugouts by the Haida and others were glories) as were the birchbark canoes. Both were the inspiration for generations of later boats built in the Peterborough, Ontario and New York/New England areas. The wide board and batten canoe was made from three or four edge-to-edge longitudinal planks bent over a mold, initially a dugout, with the planks held to gether by widely spaced transverse ribs with the seams sealed by battens nailed inside. It was originally marketed as the plank dugout, being an attempt to get around the shortage of sufficiently large logs. In some versions the short wood battens between the ribs were replaced by continuous U-shaped metal battens pressed into narrow rabbets, less leaky but more expensive. The double cedar canoe consists of narrow longitudinal planks outside and transverse planks inside, all planks installed edge-to-edge, with a layer of canvas soaked in a sealer between; in an attempt to get a smooth interior surface. The cedar strip canoe is familiar to us all from many beautifully varnished 100-year-old specimens, built with narrow edge-to-edge longitudinal planks and lots of narrow transverse ribs; it is really a carvel hull without the oakum seals, and like the carvel becomes water-tight as the wet wood expands if the varnish doesn't do the job. The cedar rib canoe is just transverse ribs, edge to edge, held together by a few longitudinal stringers inside, sort of an inside-out cedar strip canoe. The canvas canoe was built like a birchbark, an outer skin of canvas instead of birchbark, longitudinal stringers usually installed edge-to-edge, with transverse ribs, heavy but cheap. The lapstrake or clinker-built canoes used the European style of building, Rushton's Wee Lassie (q.v.) is a famous example. * The lapstrake canoe lives on in the glued lapstrake canoe and the cedar strip canoe has had its ribs replaced by glass cloth and epoxy. Plywood was used over a frame for a long time resulting in a heavy hull but the advent of the stitch and glue method with epoxy-reinforced seams (and usually with a glass cloth and an epoxy saturated finish) eliminated the frame and much of the weight. I don't mention plastics because they are unmentionable.

I don't know much about sealskin-covered kayaks but a search of this term should tell you a lot, and don't forget to search for umiak and baidarka as well. Also try substituting Q for K, as alternative spellings are muddying things a bit.

Modern techniques mostly involve stitch and glue (plywood) or cedar strips (with cove and bead edges) for kayaks, but some folks are building great boats using aluminum tubing and dacron (or other) fabric skin. Most of the old methods required old-growth forest products and/or immense investment of time and skill. Are you planning on building? if so keep us all informed. Good luck and happy hunting.

[timgoz]

The Inuit used sealskin or caribou over wood frames. Some areas had wood available, others had to use driftwood or trade for it. Wood or bone pegs & sinew lashings secured the frames. Sinew was used to seal the hides seams and simular to sealskin mukluks, created a watertight seam. For the larger Umiaks they used walrus or Beluga hides. If you google "Inuit Kayaks" you will find a wealth of information.

Tim