Gordon's Boatbuilding Pages

A couple years ago I built myself a Chesapeake 17 - a "stitch and glue" kayak made from panels of okoume plywood.  (Click here to go to CLC's Chesapeake 17 page.)  It's a great boat.
	My Chesapeake 17 ashore at the sand spit, Morro Bay.

I enjoyed building it so much I thought it would be fun to build another.  This time I've decided to build a Guillemot.  It's a 17' "strip-built" kayak, designed by Nick Schade.  This one will be for Aileen - I think it might be a little small for me and my size 14 feet!  (We'll see!)  Ali and Bobby should fit fine in it as well.  Who knows?  Maybe I can use the forms to build boats for them as well.

When I built the Chesapeake I bought a kit.  It was a pretty good deal, but it was still quite a bit of money.  This time I'm going to do as much by myself as I can.  We'll see how much it ends up costing.  I did spring for pre-drawn, full-size plans.  They were $80, (plans) and I think they were well worth it.

Most of what I've done so far has been prep work.

• clean the garage so there's enough room to work on a 17 foot kayak
• build a router table!  (This took a couple of weekends.)
• buy bead and cove router bits
• buy a thin-kerf ripping blade for the table saw
• build a longer, taller rip fence for my table saw
• build an infeed table for my table saw

I didn't have a digital camera when I built the Chesapeake.  Now I do!  I'll be posting lots of pictures to document my progress.

For those who are already familiar with the strip building process, much of what I say will seem rather rudimentary.  I'm intending these pages more for my dad, who is not familiar with the technique but who is intrigued, and for other family members and friends for whom this is a new idea.