What it is

To let people know who haven't nerded out for days of their lives on the interwebs looking at these things, I'll give a brief description of the build and the abilities of the craft I am making. It is a skin-on-frame boat, built on the 4,000 year old design of the Greenland Inuits. It has remained fairly unchanged in the last four millenia and can still outperform many modern boats. The Inuits made theirs out of driftwood and seal skin where I am making mine out of cedar, oak and nylon ballistic fabric.

The design is built around anthropometric measurements. The overall length is thrice the users armspan, it's beam the user's waist plus a fist or two depending on skill level. Before building I sat on a 2x8 on a 1x1 to find my balance point, where I want my footrest beam, thigh beam(masik) and backrest to be as well as where I don't want the steam bent ribs to be, like my bum and heels. From here, I transferred said marks on to the gun'l's and from there could mark all the rest of the deck beams and ribs. All that is left to do is to do it.

The frame is built with two gun'l's, lashed into shape to deck beams with mortise and tenon joints. The ribs are steam bent and attached to the gun'l's and then the keel and two runners go on to define the shape of the hull once the skin is on. There are no nails or screws, everything is lashed together using mortise and tenon's or dowels. This gives some advantages known to many ancient mariners, Inuit, Viking and Celtic alike. A ribbed hull that is lashed can flex to absorb blows from rocks or other objects in the sea and bounce back to shape, where fiberglass or plastic would crack or smash. It can also 'hug' the waves, bending with them instead of being forced around by them, giving them excellent roughwater handling. The finished kayak when I'm done should weigh less than thirty pounds, a similar fiberglass kayak would weight close to seventy pounds. I should be able to put this on my roof rack single handedly no problem. It is also cheaper, I'm spending about $800 on this including shipping from afar, speciality woods and nice tools. I could have saved money but spent more time and effort sourcing the material, and probably gas money too. A store bought kayak of similar performance could cost up to $4000!


Here are some teaser pics and next post I'll actually mention the build process!