Blog
Jan 16, 2006 - Baidarka Double
Baidarka Double
I am starting on a baidarka double to have around as a demo. I am also documenting the process closely to use for the next edition of the Aleutian kayak. The problem with documentation is that it takes longer than actually building a boat. Oh well.
The start of a new baidarka, an 18 foot long piece of one by four clear, vertical grain douglas fir.
Router trials and tribulations
I wasn't even using my router yet, but wanted to take a picture of it as one of the tools that's handy for cutting rib mortises. And so I thought I'd adjust the depth of the router bit to half an inch for taking the picture. But I'd forgotten that the adjustment mechanism was jammed up, so I started working on fixing that. The top and bottom half of the router basically screw into each other and you adjust depth of the bit by screwing the top half in or out of the bottom half. Only problem was that something was jamming up the works, like a gummed up jar lid or a rusted bolt. My hands weren't up to twisting the two halves apart or getting them to budge. Actually, I didn't even know how to get at the screw mechanism to find out what was jamming it. So I started removing screws and was able to pull the motor apart. Only that didn't help any with getting at the screw mechanism. Next I clamped the router bottom in a vise and twiseted on the top and after much effort, managed to get the top unscrewed from the bottom.The stuff that I thougt was jamming the screws just wasn't there. Nothing was jamming the screw mechanism. I played around with it some and concluded that either the inner screw had expanded or the outer part had shrunk. How that would happen I had no idea, or why anyone would build a thing like this that swells up spontaneously and locks up so tight you can't turn it I don't know. Clearly a bad design. So I took the sander to the inner screw part and worked it down til I could screw the two halves back together by hand.
Now I had the screw mechanism working but still had to get the motor back together. To do that I had to pull the brushes out, slide the rotor back in place and then get the brushes back. Fairly easy. Got it all back together, flicked the switch and good as new. Two hours down the drain, but I had a working router again.
After a two hour detour to get the router adjustment mechanism to work, the router is back in action as a photo model.