beautiful skeleton

Stumbled on to a fascinating web site. Any of you interested in kayaks, more correctly baidarkas? This is a building system almost rivaling science fiction. It's worth a look. flickr.com/photos/tellytom/120981459/in/set-72057594061975962 or if you dont want to type all those numbers just google George Dyson and you will get there. For those not familiar with the name, George is the ne'er do well boat obsessed son of Freeman Dyson. Freeman Dyson is a scientist, physicist, mathematician of world class stature. George is pretty bright himself.

 

You don't have to retype all that. Just copy it, and paste it into your address bar. Fascinating stuff...

 

Love to see one with a clear skin, shame to hide the structure.

 

Ask and ye shall recieve!




These two are from Dave Wilhelm up in Acme. He builds very traditional boats with the same kind of nylon skin George Dyson uses. The completed boats are somewhat translucent.

www.dwkayaks.com



Yostwerkes does some of their kayaks with clear vinyl skins, quite nice to look at though it lacks the durability of the nylon.

http://yostwerks.com/index.html

 

I'm currently building a 16ft row boat using the same principle, using aluminium tubing for the frame and epoxy/glass over foam for the stem and transom. My frame is pop riveted together with 4mm diameter stainless steel rivets, rather than laced together with cord:



It makes for a quick and light way to build a simple hull for a recreational boat.

Jeremy

 

Jeremy nice strong modern material frame. On this side of the pond, Metal frame was how i built my first boat some 53 yrs. ago, I was 12 or 13 at the time. It was a canoe shaped affair formed from a large piece of wire mesh used in the concrete buisness. I covered it with one of my fathers painting tarps sort of sewn on and waterproofed with boiled linceed oil.(all under the table scrounged supplies) Hey it was that important step up from log rafts ----Geo.

A yacht is not defined by the vessel but by the care and love of her owner

 

http://www.amazon.com/Baidarka-Kayak-George-Dyson/dp/088240315X

 

Aluminum frame work is not a new idea. Waaaay back in time when I was a kid, there was an outfit named Meade (maybe Mead) Kayaks or something like that. They built kayak/canoe kits for sale to kids like me. All the ribs were formed with aluminum hat sections. The hat sections were probably formed up into long lengths and then cut to size and bent into the boat section shapes. The kits included lovely spruce stringers, canvas, a whole lot of small screws, paint, copper tacks, and a reasonably good instruction booklet. The stringers were screwed onto the hat section from the inside out. The finished boat was pretty damned good. Vulnerable of course because it was a SOF type boat and the canvas in those days was less than bullet proof.

Those kits were advertised in magazines like Mechanix Illustrated and Popular Mechanics. That was long before the instant gratification craze, when kids had to actually do the work themselves. I used the proceeds from many many weeks of pedalling my paper route to buy the kit. The kit and the ultimate boat was worth every drop of sweat that went into its purchase price and its building.

Any one out there old enough to remember those kits? Aaaah, nostalgia!

 

My first kitboat was the Folboat Sportabout. I built it 1 foot longer than the plans and had a great time.

 

Some images:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tellytom/122341731/in/set-72057594061975962/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tellytom/120980887/in/set-72057594061975962/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tellytom/120981459/in/set-72057594061975962/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tellytom/104915260/in/set-72057594061975962/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tellytom/124974437/in/set-72057594061975962/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tellytom/97757118/in/set-72057594061975962/

 

what are the foot pedals for?

the fist skin-on-frame kayaks I built I put them in because all the factory boats had them. I got leg cramps and painful feet. I noticed none of the native water craft had them (nor rudders for that matter), so I decided them are "white man" inventions and do not belong in native watercraft. No more cramps or scrapped feet, I can stretch my legs, relax, move around in my narrow kayaks. when I want to roll or maneuver I learned to grip the hull with my thighs (because a native kayak is much more narrow than the factory built barges), so I seen no reason for foot rests at all. And have never put any more in the 13 plus kayaks I have built since.

There is much to learn from those who invented the kayak for their survival, not just for recreation or to separate a customer from his money.

 

I like having something to push against to move up in the seat, but other than that they do seem pretty useless. Not sure if I'll put them in my current project or not.

 

I had assumed they were rudder pedals but I don't see any cables so they must be foot rests.

Foot rests are nice in a wider boat where they allow you to brace, and are easier on the hip joints than a knee- or thigh-brace, but are probably pointless in a "bespoke" boat that is tailored to fit the paddler snugly the way a classic kayak would have been. They are more of a feature in mass-produced "fit-all" craft.

Having said that, as an older paddler I prefer a wider, more stable boat so I will add footrests if the first paddling trip in a new boat indicates the need.

I also like to have a rudder on windy days; I like my boats to windsock into the wind slightly, and the rudder is used to trim the boat during a long cross-wind leg rather than for steering.

 

fabric

I'm trying to get information about the fabric used to cover a skin on frame boat. What weave and weight as well as material type. I have conflicting information about denier, weight and type. My boat is similar to the 16' rowing boat with the aluminum frame. Weight is not as important as duribility

 

I got the two attached docs from George Dyson recently. He sells and ships kayak skin all over the world. The first .pdf includes prices.