Dec 10, 2005 - Boat Maintenance and the Black Helicopters

Boat Maintenance

The boats out front of the shop waiting for their varnish, in the background, the home of the China Clipper.

But with a new coat of varnish, the boats look better. They don't look new again, they just look cared for. Skin, even plastic skin ages and picks up colors and gets bleached in parts and stained in others and so develops character, something I find very pleasant. Who wants a boat that looks like it hasn't had any water under its keel.

Black helicopter sighting

And while I was outside varnishing, the helicopters showed up again. They had been doing this for the past three days. There were two of them and they came in low over the water from the direction of San Francisco and then hung out around the Hornet, a retired aircraft carrier berthed about a quarter mile from the shop. They would go right then left and up and down and back and forth, we thought maybe some military exercise since it seemed pointless enough to qualify as such. However, next day's papers revealed that the helicopters were part of an episode of Fear Factor that was being filmed here. Oh well, TV mirrors life.

Meanwhile, the sun went down, the varnish on the boats wasn't quite dry, but it was time to pack it in. Another lovely sunset so I took a photo, the sky was red and the lights of San Francisco were all twinkley. Another day at the boatshop was over. No snow, but still a fairly christmassy ambiance.

Dec 9, 2005 - Photos, Videos and Paddle Blanks

Paddle Blanks

Before I got my 50 plus spring clamps, this is what a clamped up paddle blank used to look like.

Besides the usual Greenland paddle, I also need to do a replica of the paddle at Ft. Ross. It is an Aleut style paddle, 3 inch wide blade (narrow) and a whopping 103 inches long, that's 16 inches longer than I usually make paddles. And, I will also be experimenting with new ways of putting hardwood tips on my paddles.

This picture is laying on its side, so you need to tilt your head to the left to view it properly but you get the idea. This is a narrow paddle, 3 inches at the widest point tapering down to 2 inches at 5 inches from the root of the loom. Total length is 103 inches with loom length at about 26 inches. Also note the pointy tip.

A side view in not very good focus. You can see the chunk missing out of the side of the blade but more importantly, you can see the shape of the central ridge and the climb up to the top of the loom at an elevation of 1-3/4 inches. Note that the slope of the ridge from the loom to the tip of the blade is not a straight line but drops off more sharply closer to the loom and then gradually apers down.

This photo shows the transition from the blade to the loom very nicely.

Videos etc.

They're all fun boats, but I noticed when viewing the finished photos that I was doing the most smiling when paddling the canoe. Matter of fact, I had an almost constant grin on my face. I'm not sure why, but maybe I just got more relaxed near the end of the photo shoot. There's something to be said for messing about in boats.

Speaking of pictures, Glen sent me a copy of the Rolling Videos that he and Tony shot on Sunday. I did the rolling. The videos turned out great. It's just raw footage, but I want to go on record here that Glen's idea of shooting rolling videos from an elevated vantage point is a winner. I would patent that approach if that was possible. Don't be surprised if in the future, the shooting rolling pictures from a bridge does not become the new standard. The thing that is missing from most rolling videos is what the paddle is doing under water while the kayaker is upside down. Not in these videos shot from a bridge. You can clearly see the underwater setup and paddle motions. Glen will be getting me a few clips from the raw footage and I will post them here so you can see what I mean.

Dec 7, 2005 - Photo day

Got the pics. Perfect day. Gray and overcast, so no strong shadows to deal with and everything visible. Pictures coming soon.

The boats on the beach, ready for me to take on the water. From left to right, 10 foot playboat, 14 foot baidarka, 16 foot canoe, 24 pounds, 35 pound and 60 pounds respectively.

Getting ready to build again

Dec 6, 2005

Anyway, the idea with weighing the wood is to get some idea beforehand of how light or how heavy the finished paddles will be. I have a wood handbook which has tables of wood densities but that assumes you know which exact species of wood you are looking at in the flesh, which in the case of the "white wood" and the pine I don't know. So it's easy enough to weigh the wood. The only tedious part is to measure the wood and figure out how many cubic inches it is and then figure out the density in pounds per cubic inch and divide that by the pounds per cubic inch of water for the specific gravity. As I am typing this, it occurs to me that if I did the measurements in centimeters, the math might be easier since in metric units, water weighs 1kg/1000 cc. I can knock off three decimal places in my head.

So here are the results - they are good to maybe one and a half decimal places since the scale I weighed the wood on is accurate only to the nearest quarter pound. The numbers are unit-less specific gravity, that is, weight per unit volume divided by weight of water of the same unit volume.

.34 - Redwood
.51 - Dense pine
.54 - White wood
.70 - Green Doug fir

The green Doug fir wasn't really a candidate for paddle making, but I thought I'd throw it in for comparison. Twice as dense a redwood, Wow! Except that redwood isn't a good boat building material. It is brittle and snaps easily.

One week closer to Christmas

Dec 5, 2005

First, the annual BASK (Bay Are Sea Kayakers') holiday party took place at the Presidio Yacht club near Sausalito at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge on Saturday. The party took place after dark and the view of the Bridge, with the red-orange piers lit up and little orange lights along the suspension cables made for a lovely view. Boats were passing through the Golden Gate, revealed only by their lights. One had to guess at the size and kind of ship by how big the cluster of lights was. This was the first time I wished I had my camera.

The party as is usual for Christmas parties had lots of food and drink. One difference from Wisconsin, my home state was the absence of deer sausage and the raw steak platter.

Demographics of Sea Kayaking

Rolling Video

One of the defects of many rolling videos is that they are shot from the side at a flat angle by someone at water level. These videos miss the half of the action that happens on the side of the boat away from the camera. So Glen had the idea of shooting from a high angle. We went over to Oakland's Aquatic center boat ramp where a bridge passes over a part of the estuary. It was close to high tide and not much current was pushing so I was able to do rolls without drifting out of the shot. Tony was on the bridge shooting and Glen was in a wide sit-on top shooting simultaneously at water level. Glen also has some new editing software which he will be editing this video down with.

The rolling went ok. I did as many different rolls as I could remember to do. I don't have that many, but enough variety with retakes to roll for at least half an hour. I'll have to practice and fill out my repertoire some more. We'll see how it turns out.

Kayak speeds

Post Thanksgiving Doings

Dec 3, 2005

In the shop holding up paddle for a prop.

Created a building log for the website. Called it boatbuilding tales. The idea is that it's not the boat so much that is interesting but people's stories of how they came to build boats and why. We want to hear their stories.

Been taking pictures out the front door of the shop. November was a great month for sunsets. I don't know why that is, but it was the same in the midwest.

Also, on the topic of shop safety, we have a cautionary tale involving the use of tools. I personally think that it's impossible to use tools and not get hurt, but hopefully we get hurt just enough to learn to be more cautious, in homeopathic doses as it were. The other day I was using the bandsaw, a metal cutting model I bought used off my neighbor. It still had the metal blade in it and I was cutting 1-1/2 inch thick lumber with it, pushing hard to get it to feed. Metal blades have small closely set teeth and cut wood much more slowly than wood cutting blades. Anyway, that's why I was pushing the wood into the blade with some force. Only trouble was that at the end of the cut, all the resistance was gone and my hand kept right on pushing and I ran my wrist into the saw.

And if that wasn't bad enough, less than a minute later, I did it again. Apparently there wasn't enough pain or damage the first time around to make me learn. Anyway, the damage was minor. The cuts are starting to heal.