Milling strips, sheer strip and beyond

Last week I started the stripping process with the boat. With all the forms in place and secured I borrowed some people to help me with milling the 1x6 boards into strips that are nominally 1/4" x 3/4". I had acquired 2 1x6x20' and 1 1x6x13' from the lumberyard in Des Moines, I also had a 1x10x12' of cypress that I will be using to build the football (the flatish are that makes up the bottom of the boat) and do accent work with. I also had a bit of walnut laying around as well that I will use to build up my sheer.
The lumber all got milled and stacked together with similar color boards (I had about 5 different shades of wood).
The first strip to get put on is the sheer strip which is also the most important because it gives shape to all the following strips as well. I used a thin piece of cypress with a similarly thin piece of walnut to build up my sheer.


sheer: The upward curve or amount of upward curve of the longitudinal lines of a ship's hull as viewed from the side.


This was a somewhat challenging process created more challenging because I am building this boat without staples. Most commonly people will align the strips and then staple them to the forms to keep them in place until the boat is all stripped out, however this leaves hundreds of tiny staple holes that are fairly noticeable later. I am trying to build this stapless which means I have to use a variety of clamps and hot glue to keep everything together.

I also laminated the stems using epoxy. There are two sets of stems. The interior are cedar and will be shaped to accept and hold the strips, the exterior and cypress with an accent of cedar and will act as a small keel once shaped.


After the sheer strips are on its only a matter of running a hand bevel on the following strips to make the previous one and attempting to make them as flush as possible as you build them up.

Kayak #2: Building the Strongback and Forms

The first (at least) 60 hours of this project went into building a set of forms that I would wrap the wood strips around to form the shape of the boat. The Redfish Silver that I am building is a 16' - 7" boat that should fit Sarahs 5'-7" very well. Sea kayaks are long boats because of two reasons. They track better over large areas of water; which means you dont need to work to hard to keep them straight. Also, the longer the boat the faster you can go. This boat also has a slight fore rocker designed in which allows for better turning with just your body. This is a pretty narrow boat with only a 22" beam (width where you sit) which make for a slightly more tippy boat, however this is an advantage when it comes to surf, big water, or rolls.
I built station platforms out of salvaged plywood and MDF from the dumpster. This wood was very warped but I managed to get a relatively straight strongback (long straight piece of wood that the forms are attached too) from it. I built racks for my future strips of wood onto the stations.

Then I cut out the forms (which I received from the plans) and spent about a week aligning, sanding, measuring, and aligning again. The old adage is measure twice cut once. Mine was more like measure 30 times, cut once.
To help get the boat as straight as possible I ran string lines over the center line and sheer lines.

station risers with forms attached

viewing down the string lines to see the alignment

you can start to see the shape of the boat!

Kayak #1

I have wanted to build a strip-built wooden kayak for a while now. Mostly because I really like kayaking and wooden boats are superior to plastic ones in almost every way (lighter, prettier, custom built, etc...) Since I nearly graduated I decided that this summer was a great opportunity to try my hand at constructing one. After some finagling I got permission to build it at the ISU outdoor Rec gear room (yay!). And the research began to decide what boat to build.

Originally I wanted to do a fully custom designed boat but I decided against it when I realized all the detailing that was needed that I didnt understand. There are many kayak designers across the country. Most notably are Nick Schade, Rob Mack, Jason Babina, to name a few. I wanted to build a boat for Sarah who requires slightly different sizing. I chose to order plans for a Redfish Silver from Joe Greenly at Redfish Kayaks.

So. Step one was completed, I had a space to work and plans for the boat. I also have been using Nick Schrades book, The Strip-Built Sea Kayak, as a reference to where I deviate from the Redfish designs.

Step two was finding supplies as cheaply as possible.

#1, wood
Many kinds of wood can be used to build kayaks. Traditionally the people of Greenland and Alaska first developed kayaks out of driftwood to hunt seals. The standard wood now is clear (no knots) Western Red Cedar because it has a very good strength to weight ratio (.31) and its beautiful variations in color.

However, its impossible to find clear Western Red Cedar in the midwest. After calling about 20 places I finally found a lumber yard that would ship it for free and I only pay for the wood. Along with the cedar I chose to use local Cypress for its yellows and reds

and I plan on doing some trim and detailing with Walnut.


#2, fiberglass and epoxy
Ive never worked with these materials before so its a little scary. After the boats gets stripped I will cover it with a fiberglass coat to give it its strength. I found a great deal on MAS epoxyies and sent out for a $345 order for hopefully everything I will need.

#3, tools
A kayak is largely a hand built project however I did need to round up some tools. I bought a nice Japanese pull saw and a block plane. Chad offered the use of his table saw along with numerous other needed items. And Paul let me use his jig saw.

so with that I had almost all the necessary supplies to make this boat!

more later

Switching directions

Its time for this blog to move from Italy to Ames! So. I am going to be posting things that Sarah and I have been working and playing with this summer! enjoy!

School

Im on a role, so Im just going to keep going

So believe it or not I did do some work while I was here.

Studio:

The studios were broken up into 4 short 2-3 week studios.

Project 1: this was a study of wayfinding in Roma. We had to walk from studio to a given location (mine was Chiesa S. Maria Rotunda) and map it using references to Path, Edge, Node, Landmark, and District.

Project 2: This was a study of the Roman market, specifically San Giovanni di Dio in Trastevere. This is a study that built of each others work, so since I was in the first rotation we spent a lot of time just wandering around this market and talking to people to get an understanding of the pros and cons of the market.

Project 3: The TRA studio, by far my favorite. This studio focus on 3 sites, each person had a site and had to identify a Tra space (between space) in that sight a graphically represent it. Then the drawings we passed to the next person and you had to add on their drawing in either a reflection of their work, or denial, depending on your approach. My sight was a passage that was a old vomitoria for the Teatro di Pompeo, so I was able to research and discuss this space (very fun)

Project 4: The Idroscale Studio which worked with a group of squatters at the mouth of the Tiber River. This studio attempted to work with these people to establish a sort of legitimacy for them, in hopes of proposing something legit to the city so they wont get kicked off their land.


Along with studio I also had 3 other classes:

Analytical Drawing: We drew stuff, not much else to say

Italian Design: This class focused on Italian Industrial design

Urban Walks/Lectures: We took walks with one of our professors around the city every week or so, and also had a great lecture series about the history of the city from antiquity, through renissance, and up to the fascist.

Sicily

ready for a big one!?

SICILY!!!

this was the week long trip I took before spring break with my architecture program.

for the sake of not making this an hour long ready (and 5 hour long type) I am going to breeze through some details, however I will still list them briefly.

This trip was a very fun trip, for a lot of reasons, but it made my views of Sicily change from fear, to love.


We arrived in Palermo and had a 30 min. crazy taxi ride, the craziest you can imagine, it included yelling Italians, they yelled at each other before we left, then they yelled at each other through the windows as we were driving 200 kmh on the highway, and they stopped at lights, got out of the car and yelled more at each other. It was intense. At one point my driver put the parking break on and got out while the car was still rolling, we just hoped that it would stop before it hit the car in front of us... it id, by about a foot.

That was my introduction to Sicily.

We were supposed to go visit a villa of sorts, however as Ben, Max and I were wandering around to find a place to eat we stopped at a restaurant right by the sea to get some beer. The owner came out and chatted with us, he asked us how long we were in Sicily, and if we wanted something to eat. We said sure (thinking it would be a small assortment of plates) .

the harbor of Palermo

mussles

octopus

here is the antipasti (1st course), octopus, mussles, eggplant con parmisan, and salmon

we thought we were done after those plates (didnt even finish them) we were wrong.

primi, rice with assorted sea, fruitti del mare


primi, spagetti with clams

the waiter saw us photodocumenting so he stole the camera and took our picture

Max is trying to comprehend whats happening

then came the secondi (3rd course)

giant shrimp

fried calamari

fish platter, tuna steak, makeral

and then came the fourth course, the contorni

salad with olives and tomato

he asked us if we wanted desert and we said.... no.... so he said, ok, I will bring you the fruit then

sugared orange

then the bill came


E75 for the three of us, written on a piece of graph paper.... pretty good deal


Just to recap that meal, here is what the three of us attempted to eat:
-3 liters of beer
-2 loaves of bread

antipasti
-salmon
-octopus
-mussles
-eggplant con parmisan

primi
-spaghetti with clams
-rice with frutti del mare

secondi
-tuna steak
-makeral
-giant shrimp
-fried calamari

contorni
-salad with olives and tomato

dolce/frutti
-sugared oranges

which makes this a 13 plate meal. The only plate we finished was the oranges, and that was not an easy task.


In order to recover we went to this nearby park (best park Ive ever been too, and passed out)


Later we saw the Duomo, which speaks of the ecclectic nature of Sicily. They got invaded by everyone and it shows in many things, including the architecture. The Normans, Arabs, Northern Italians, French, Argonese, Spanish... the list goes on and on.


cool islamic patterning

this chapel has the most mosaic in the world.



Palermo was one of the landing sites for the Allies invasion of Sicily in WWII, they bombed it (unnecessarily) and destroyed the historic center, no one has money to repair it so it just stays in a bombed out state.
It was pretty late at this point and the rest of the class was passed out, so to just make sure we had eaten enough we wandered around to find a bar. We found a cool little bar and walked in, we were looking at what they had when numerous people came up to us and talked to us about what they thought was best. After getting all 13 peoples advice and tasting numerous things, we ordered what we thought were fried potatoe balls. 3 of them. However these turned out to be enormous fried potatoe ball sandwhiches which we got 6 of instead. for E1.50, quite a deal. So we once again had far to much food....

Sicilians are nice.

Day 2:

This day we took a tour of a cooperative of farms and vineyards that used to be under the hands of one of the 3 biggest mafia bosses, Brusca. I would try to give you all the Mafia history we learned but its incredibly facinating stuff, in short, Brusca was jailed in the 1990's and his land was then donated to the state who then passed it along to this coop.



Just as an example of mafia ridiculousness, this bridge was built because the mafia was trying to waste the governments money, and this was a unnecessary bridge that the mafia got built.

this is the site of a massacre that happened during labor day in 1947. The communist party just won a big election and in response the capitalist mafia shot into a celebrating crowd killing 11 people.


To celebrate this happiness we went to Brusca's old house and ate an enormous meal.


arancini (fried rice balls) with a fried potato bread

lasagna, italian style

walnut sauce pasta

eggplant con parmesian

peas

potatoes

cannoli

Day 3:

Our bus drive, Maurizo, took control of the plans to tour Sicily, and the first stop was to get a sugary dessert that was similar to cannoli but even richer (hard to imagine)


this is Castelamarre, a town we would stay our last night in.


and more dessert.

we then stopped at one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever been too. It had beautiful blue water and sand that you could walk out over 300 feet on. The water was a bit chilly though, and not many people ventured in.


some frisbee
I spent probably an hour body surfing on the 8 foot waves out there.
I then got hypothermic and couldn't warm up until I put all my clothes on (including jacket, had a pot of hot tea, and ran some laps around the beach)


Then it was off to the Medieval hill town of Erice.
super cool place, famous for Marzipan



Finally we arrived in our destination for the night, Trapani.

To celebrate we went out for Cous Cous with fish and spent an hour trying to get to the end of the natural break wall. We had to time the waves right so we didnt get swept in.

Here is Ben celebrating the last rock.
Day 4:

Brian, Ben and I decided to go for a sunrise harbor run





Then we headed off to the ancient Greek town of Segesta

This is a temple

This is also a great example of a greek-roman theatre. Amazing acoustics

George and I balancing on a wall


Then it was off to Marsala where we had a mid day feast


fired veal and fries

calamari
The Isle of Mozia off the coast of Marsala is a small island that was used by the Phonecians 2800 years ago.
The old Phoenician harbor

Bonus ruins

bonus flowers

more bonus ruins, I walked around the whole Island on a trail in about an hour, it was very beautiful at golden hour, very peaceful
Boating back to Marsala
Marsala is famous for its salt industry. These are the old windmills that pumped water between the salt pans.
Salt piles

Day 5:

The next morning I woke again for a solo sunrise beach stroll in the town of Seliunte
Seliunte was another greek civilization in 400BC, a very prosperous city, it was sacked by the Carthaginians who raped, and killed nearly all 20,000 inhabitants.

They have 3 famous temples, one has been reconstructed after the sacking.
this is the temple
this is the temple of Zeus, which was supposedly 3 times the size of the previous temple. We all climbed around on it, I climbed up a 30 ft, doric column that was nearly 3000 years old


here I am jumping down from another column climb
This is the agora (similar to the roman forum), we are getting kinda toured out if you cant tell
Ben walking down the ancient walls of Siliunte

Lunch
This is the quarry for the city of Siliunte, we did some bouldering here.

This is the town of Gibellina Nuova, the old town of Gibellina was destroyed in a earthquake in the 60's it is now an art installation of massive concrete slabs.

The new town was supposed to be a utopia city of modernism, however the mafia got involved and sucked the money for the projects into their personal accounts leaving most of the towns buildings unfinished.

This is a crane that just fell over 30 years ago that now is a playground for Max
This is a house for a tree.


And then we went to the town of Castellamare and ate more food.Day 6:

Castellamare fun
The city and Duomo of Monreale

Duomo light

cloister

And our last meal in Sicily, overlooking the city of Palermo from Monreale
Gnocchi in tomato and cheese sauce

cassata

parting glance