Wacko Ways to Build a Boat

Busy day so far! Continuing on some of the detail stuff on my Pygmy Borealis XL kayak. I received my new batch of epoxy and was able to do some fiberglassing jobs this morning. First I filled the backside of the bulkhead holes that I drilled through the bulkheads with epoxy, and then fiberglassed the bulkheads. The 3.5" stock that will become the hip braces was fiberglassed too. See picture below. Then I sanded and fiberglassed the insides of the hatches that I cut out last week. All of those fiberglassed pieces will be trimmed once they reach the "green stage" in a few hours. Then I started in on making my custom kayak hand toggles. One of my many hobbies is woodworking and I'm fortunate enough to have many woodworking tools; table saw, band saw, stationary sander, etc... Because I have access to the tools I can make my own custom hand toggles, but if you don't have access you may decide to simply purchase the plastic ones that Pygmy or other suppl...

Soft Webbing Strap Eyes If you want to put shock cording or perimeter lines on your kayak, Pygmy™ offers a kit that includes hard plastic strap eyes that you screw into your hull. They stick up and are a bit cheap looking. An easy, strong, softer, and much better looking solution is to make your own soft strap eyes out of nylon webbing material. Go to your local sewing/fabric store and buy some ¾” wide polypropylene webbing (NOT cloth!). You’ll cut them to 4.5” so get as much as you need to cover all the pad eyes you plan to use. It's usually sold by the yard so get at least two. It's cheap. I bought mine at Seattle Fabrics for $0.55/yard. They also have many other colors and widths! I usually get black because it doesn’t fade as quickly, but these are so easy to make that if you choose another color you can easily replace them later if they fade. You’ll also need stainless steel hardware:   12 to 16 or more #10/32 x ¾” Stainless Steel Machine Screws and #1...

Making good progress on my Pygmy Borealis kayak! The bulkheads were fitted and then fiberglassed. Fitting the bulkheads is one of the trickier tasks. There are several methods you can try, but most involve trial and error, and nipping small bits away over and over. Just stick with it. I start by using cardboard cutouts of the bulkheads that come with the kit. Just trace around them and cut them out. Also cut finger holes in the cardboard so that you can maneuver the templates in and out of the hull. Try to fit them by seeing where they need to be trimmed, marking those areas, trimming the cardboard away, and repeating until you get a cardboard template that fits reasonably well. Below are the cardboard templates. Notice the finger hole cutouts. The tongue depressors are glued to the stern template to the actual edge where I cut too much and had a large gap. Just hot glue some tongue depressors or cardboard in place where you have a large gap, and then transfer that line to the ac...

I've mentioned many times that I'm doing some steps out of order. It just makes it easier and makes more sense if you can keep them all straight. The Pygmy manual has you wait to cut the hatches until the entire boat is done. It also suggests that you wait to run tape along the inside hull/deck joint until you cut the hatches. However, if you do that then it's a real pain to get the tape cleanly behind the cockpit hip braces. The seat is in the way too. So, here's a better order to do things: 1. While you are installing the coaming, you will have some time while the fiberglass cures on the upper coaming strips. This is a great time to go ahead and cut your hatches 2. Before you install the hip braces, run the hull/deck joint taping step. It's pretty easy to reach most of the joint if you have the hatches cut. 3. Now you can tinker away at installing both the upper coaming strips and the hatch spacers. Easy! Here's side two of the upper coaming stri...

Tonight I finally got around to fiberglassing the first side of the upper coaming strips on my Pygmy Borealis XL build. Since I was doing this job it's not really any more work to also do the lower hatch lips too, so I puzzled them all together and found a piece of scrap cloth that fit over all of them. Then painted on some epoxy and carefully squeegeed it off shortly after. Either late tonight, but most likely tomorrow morning, I will trim the cloth down to the edges. Then tomorrow I can trim them flush. Also removed the clamps from the lower coaming. Peace!

Yes, I'm going slow with the lower coaming pieces as they tend to be something that the eye is drawn to and I want them to look good. Normally you would just glue them down and be done with it. However, yesterday I ran a small fillet of thickened epoxy around the bottom of the strips. Today I cleaned up those strips with some sanding and then painted on a coat of epoxy. Looks good! The clamps stayed on because it's only been 24 hours and the shop hasn't been that warm. I want to leave them on for another day just to be absolutely sure that it is cured before I release the clamps and let the epoxy take the tension from the strips. I also drilled the 1/2" holes for the hand toggles. It's always a challenge to get the holes in a visually appealing position, and then it's another challenge to drill the holes without having the wood on the other side blow out. This time I had minimal damage but there is still some that I may have to clean up. I trie...

Another tip for custom building a Pygmy Borealis XL kayak: A few posts ago I mentioned that I change the order of sanding operations from how they are mentioned in the official Pygmy manual. Following the order of sanding below I feel results in a smooth boat with less fuss.  It also has two distinct advantages: 1) It makes it easy to fully sand underneath the coaming, and 2) it makes it much easier to get a smooth glassing job around the sides of the #4 panels. Order of Sanding: When to Sand the Hull & Deck The manual has you add two filler coats when you glass the hull, then it has you glass the deck, and you don’t sand the entire hull until the very last step before varnishing. We can do better and get a much better and smoother finish, but you have to be a bit more detailed. 1.       Glass the hull with your initial epoxy coat and squeegee it out well. Let dry a few hours. 2.       Trim the excess glass...

The lower coaming strips were installed tonight. Used every clamp I have. As I followed the manual pretty much word for word there isn't much else to say. My only addition was that I ran a fillet of thickened epoxy around the outside perimeter. This adds a small custom effect to your boat. Tomorrow I will sand the outside of the lower coaming and the fillet, and then carefully paint on a coat of epoxy to fully fill the edge grain and to soften the sanded fillet. Yes, I painted on epoxy on the edges the night before, but today I sanded the edges smoother and much of it came off. Should have sanded the edges first and then coated them. Stooopid! Oh well. It should look nice. Next step is to fiberglass the upper coaming strips. Not sure when I can get to it. Could have used several more of the metal screw-type C clamps. They apply much better pressure. You can screw them down tight enough to fully put the coaming down onto the hull, but you don't have to put so mu...

Took a week off of building due to out of town guests. Had fun but now I get to have another kind of fun getting back to my Pygmy Borealis build. I'm doing a few steps out of order from what is given in the manual. After I glass the deck I then sand the entire boat. Then I do the coaming. This makes it easier to flatten out the deck under the upper coaming. Tonight I trimmed the two lower coaming pieces and coated the inside and outside edges with epoxy. The edges are edge-grain wood and soak up a lot of epoxy. The manual suggests two coats but I am going to do one. Then I will mount the lower coamings onto the boat. At that point I can then run a nice fillet around the lower coaming and the deck. When that small fillet is dry I will sand it and then run a second coat of epoxy around the outside edges and onto the fillet. This will make a very nice feeling and looking edge when completed. I won't add another coat of epoxy on the inside edge as I am going...

A friend of mine is considering building a Pygmy kayak, or having me build one for him, and he asked "how much does it cost to build a Pygmy kayak?" He was guessing about $2,000 for the completed kayak including all the consumables, and that turns out to be a great guess. I worked up an Excel workbook of the costs that I could think of. It is based off of all the consumables I've used on this and previous boats: This assumes that you would want the hatch & bulkhead kit, and the custom deck perimeter lines with soft webbing padeyes similar to what I install on my boats. It does not include any tool costs because you may or may not already have many of them. I think that this amount is a realistic estimate of what a completed Pygmy solo kayak would cost. If you were to pay a professional to build it for you then you'd probably have to at least double it or more. This is based on the 2015 price of a Borealis kit; your kit may cost more or less. In the...

The two fill coats that I rolled on the deck two days ago was cured enough tonight for me to sand it. All of the little rises and dips of the fill coats easily flattened out. TIP : Don't try to use each disk too long. As soon as it starts to gum up it will only heat the epoxy and soften it so that it gets even more gummy and smears. Change the paper often! ELEVEN disks were used until I ran out of sanding disks so I'll need to finish it tomorrow. Carefully watch your work. When it's new a disk will cut and flatten well, but it will only last 5-10 minutes or so.  When it starts to take up some gummed epoxy you will notice that it quickly stops cutting well. On the flat areas I was able to use 100 grit paper without cutting too much into the cloth, although you can see that in a few the cloth is visible. Be very, VERY careful if you use 100 or 150 grit paper!! It can take down the epoxy quickly and you risk cutting into the cloth too much. In other areas I used 220. TI...