(Click any photo for a Page 1:  Getting Started (You're here now) Page 2: Milling Wood Strips Page 3: Stripping the Hull Page 4: Stripping the Deck, part 1 Page 5: Stripping the Deck, part 2 Page 6: Fairing the Boat Page 7: Epoxying the Hull Page 8: Epoxy, Epoxy... Finishing the hull and Beginning the Deck Page 9: Cockpit Combing and Hatches, Part 1 Page 10: Cockpit completion and Joining the Deck Page 12:  Final Touches & Paddling I am building a cedar wood kayak.  This is my winter project. Plans for my boat were purchased from Nick Schade, who designed this boat called Guillemot.     It's a time-proven design for a medium volume touring kayak, and is 17 feet long and 21 inches wide.  It should weight approximately 40 pounds, and basically consists of strips of wood encased in epoxy strengthenedThe name Guillemot is a name for a species of bird. A strip-built kayak allows plenty of creativity in design.  

When built perfectly, with an artistic eye, the boat I am building  looks something like the boat above. This is the first strip-built boat I am building, so I'm learning as I go. wood strips need a mold, or forms, to create the shape of the boat.  The plans for my boat included full-sizeI glued these templates to 1/2" fiberboard, and cut them out.  cabinet door inserts home depotA friend and I cut out all the forms on his band saw andshower glass doors naples fl smoothed them on a sander in afront door locks canberra To keep the fiber boardautomatic garage doors swansea

from chipping, I painted the edges with diluted glue.  If I build another boat, I will use 1/2" plywood for the forms, since it is stronger. The construction process is relatively simple:  Cover the forms with wood, then cover it with epoxy and fiberglass on both the inside and outside.  Of course there's little things like the cockpit opening, hatch covers, footrests, seat and deck rigging, but that'ssliding doors film stream forms are mounted on a long, straight beam  called a strongback.  interior french doors 48 x 96 strongback is made from 1/2"sliding barn doors with frosted glass plywood to create a 2" by 4" beam 15 feet long.  positioned every 12" along its length and at the two ends to form the shape of the

boat, like a skeleton. This might be a good time to mention that I'm building this boat in myMy HALF of the garage.  My usual workshop is a converted garden shed that is too small for a 17' kayak, so I'll be parking in the driveway until this thing is completed. I met a lot of curious neighbors when I built my first kayak, as I prefer to work with the garage door open unless the weather is The boats that are hanging from the ceiling are above my head level, except for the bow of the canoe, where I've taped a white flag to avoid collisions.  It's not quite my dream workshop, but it works well enough. lighting with 4' fluorescent lights and have a radio and CD player for company. My work table is an 8' by 2' plywood sheet placed on top of some bee hive The cashier in this picture is smiling because I spend so much money at Most of my tools and materials for this boat were purchased at Home Depot. There are people who claim to have spent nearly

nothing, building their boats from old pallets or a backyard tree, but they must not be including all the money they spent on tools they didn't have, clamps, sandpaper, latex gloves, brushes and rollers.  typically costs about $200.  My budget is to keep the overall cost below $800, including new tools. Time estimates to build a boat like this range from about 200 hours to 500 hours, depending on how much time you spend just staring at the half-built boat and planning the next step. was hard to find western red cedar wood that didn't have a lot of knots, which interfere with milling nice, long strips.   With several trips to different lumber stores, I eventually found some acceptable wood.  I also bought a board of white pine and another of walnut, for accent strips. wood in this photo will become a kayak.  Hard to believe, I This whole project is too big to have all the details figured out at the beginning.  I just have to have faith that it can be done, and that any problems can get worked

out as it progresses.Adding Electric Operation To Existing Garage Doors The thought of simply pressing a small button on a hand held radio transmiter to open and close your garage door can be very appealing, especially if you have a larger than normal single width or a double width garage door of the older one piece up and over type, heavy to lift and awkward to manouvre. Garage Doors get trickier with age You do need to genuinely be a professional weightlifter to open many older type garage doors. Quite often you need to run away fast when the door closes as it slams back down to the closed position. We started our business in 1985 by simply automating existing garage doors and soon learned you cannot make any old garage door remote control - sometimes you have to consider serious upgrades to the operating gear  in order to make the geometry work and the door functional. Nowadays of course with enormous advances in technology it is quite often easier to just rip everything out and start again, however we would never argue with the benefits of automating a perfectly serviceable existing garage door and here are some tips to make sure it is taken seriously:

Automating any existing garage door should always be possible with a few exceptions on older garage door models with very odd spring and gearing arrangements. What you should be careful of however is not to assume the electric operator is going to help with either a worn out or badly fitted garage door, both of which are heavy as they are usually not balanced correctly. Electric Garage Door Operators Bring Both Safety & Convenience An electric garage door operator should incorporate safety features which ensure the garage door will stop if an obstruction is met during its operation and reverse to prevent damage. This safety feature is built into all CE compliant modern electric operators and relies upon the garage door being properly balanced as a manual door so the safety reverse feature does not receive false readings due to 'heavy' or 'sticky' spots in the doors operation. This will give you a remote control door that keeps stopping for no apparent reason and defeat the object of door automation - convenience.

Do not even consider any electric operator that does not have an auto reverse facility. Ideally it should reverse if it meets an obstruction when opening as well, such as a car parked in front of a closed door. A simple rule of thumb with a lot of garage doors is to stand inside and pull from the top of the door (once the door has balanced springs) and and see if you can open the door fully without too much resistance. Automating Retractable Up & Over Garage Doors Retractable one piece Up & Over garage doors are the easiest type of Up & Over type dppr to add electric operation to. It consists of the installation of a boom above the structural opening with an electric operator motor installed at the other end. This is simple, easy and straightforward and should be the most cost effective too. The action is simple and smooth and also allows the addition of extra locking mechanisms for added security. Automating Canopy Up & Over Garage Doors To add automatic operation to a Canopy Up & Over garage door, you will require a bow arm conversion kit.

Shown in the second picture above, a bow arm conversion kit allows for the simple and easy operation of a canopy garage door. Due to their difference in opening with a retractable garage doors, canopy garage doors would struggle to give the same results with a retractable garage door electric set up. The bow arm conversion kit is fitted against the door and attached to the operator boom. The boom pulls the garage door and the bow arm kit is able to slide and adjust which allows the garage door to fully open with the only loss of headroom being about 120 -150mm of the bow arm itself. Automating Side Hinged Garage Doors Nearly all side hinged garage doors can be automated using 2 tried and tested methods. Swing Arm Kits work in the same way a retractable up & over operator would work, however two pivotable arms are fixed to each side of the side hinged garage door and the boom. As the boom pushes the garage door, the sides separate and the door opens freely. Electromechanical Operators can use a series of cogs and mechanical elements to open the doors, or use a smoother more powerful hydraulic motor.

Each operator uses the basics of electromechanical operation and work effectively. Details on these methods can be found on the links below. For sectional garage doors they can all be automated by the very nature of their simple and consistent smooth operation method. All they require is the addition of a boom and an operator and they are good to go. Using a good quality motor system with a sectional door will generally give you a very high level of security particularly if the door is double skinned. Generally sectional doors all come into the garage a lot further than normal up and over doors and therefore need longer booms for the electric operator to give full opening height. Automating Roller Shutter Garage Doors Most Roller Shutter garage doors can be automated however this sometimes requires a severe level of de and reconstruction. Due to the compact nature of the average roller shutter and the fact that most roller shutter electric motors are situated inside of the curtain roll, the garage door needs to be taken apart to allow the installation of the roller shutter.