Exploriment
FNG
19½' Bear Mountain True North XPD 19/3 I built with my pal Hank. Still not completely finished.
Hank called me up one day.
"Dag (his son) is the same size as you."
"I know." (We're both 6'7".)
"And nothing ever fits him."
"I can relate."
"So I wanted to make him a kayak. But I can't do it alone. So I had an idea. You help me build two. One for you. One for Dag."
"Uhhhmm... Okay!"
Wasn't what I had been planning on doing, but when an opportunity falls into your lap like that, hell yes!
We renovated the attic in his house. (He had renovated a 140 year old sail loft. Into an actual functional sail loft again, on the ground floor, his home above that, and the attic which had sat basically unused for years.) And spent several months building kayaks.
Used new cedar for the hull. Nice golden honey colour. A friend of Hank's had built a cedar strip canoe 30 years before and had a stack of cedar, already beaded and coved sitting in his barn. "My kids will just use it for firewood. I'd rather someone did something worthwhile with it." Gave it to us. Looked to be a uniform reddish colour, but when I started spokeshaving and sanding it, it turned out to be a multitude of colours. Rather liked the randomness of it.
Taking it out for a quick test paddle. Glides like nothing else.
Not so fun, but still better than sanding it after it had been fiberglassed and epoxied.
