About managing a building project...

Latest updated Friday, January 1, 2010, 16 comments

Building alone or together with others.

The one real obstacle in building is to get starting. Some spend as much time in this stadium than with the entire building project. Of course it pays to think the project through regarding shop, time, tools and costs – and rough plan the order of the tasks involved and make sure materials and hardware is in place when needed. But building the entire kayak in your mind firsthand is not productive. The details hide the overall planning. A lot of things cannot be worked out in advance and a lot of anticipated problems find their obvious soultion when you stand with the wooden strip in one hand and the stapler in the other.

Initiate, run and finish a project

A kayak or canoe consists of hundreds of tasks, pieces, patches and batches, mutually interdependent. The parts are handled individually, but it is only the total that counts. Before starting it is tempting to view at the parts simultaneosly – as obstacles piled on top of each other, needeing a superhuman high jump to overcome. But as hurdles the building project is instead a number of small easily handled tasks coming up one at the time.

Even if a canoe or kayak is a small project (compared to say, building a boat), there is much to be gained from planning for efficiency – to avoid wasting time, effort or enthusiasm. That does not mean building quick. On the contrary, taking the time – but think about how the time is used. Plan ahead for coming tasks.

The shop is often a problem. Think about handling full size particle boards or plywood sheets for the molds. Cut enough strips from the start so you do not have to move the half-completed hull to make place for ripping boards. Keep the work area clean. It is not efficient to quickly clean a corner of the workbench every time something need planing, drilling or sanding.

Mixing epoxy is a messy precision task needing concentration. Do this in a dedicated area, away from the building action. Make sure the epoxy is room temperature when used. In a cold shop it is best to store and mix epoxy in a heated room.

Arrange all such prior to building start. When the stripping begins it is full action – no time to rearrange the shop.

Plan ahead. How do you arrange the cockpit, what deck hardware do you plan to use, where does tho compass go and what about seat and foot suuport? Hatches and bulkheads, retractable skeg or rudder? It is much easier to prepare fasteners and reinforcements before gluing the deck-hull joint than after. It is far more satisfying to grab a prefabricated cockpit rim from the shelf when stripping the deck, than to break off for a couple of days to prepare one. It is frustrating to leave a completed kayak and get to work on foot support, seat etc – better to just attaching them and go paddling.

There are a lot of waiting involved – for the epoxy to set or the laquer to cure – that can be used for all those prefabrications.

For those small necessary items – staples, nails, screws, sandpaper, brusches etc – it is easy to get sloppy. But it is not efficient to look for staples under a pile of shavings and cutoffs. It is not efficient to search through sawdust on the floor for a lost screw. Or trying to cut a strip in your hand because the workbench is inaccessible.

One of the worst time thieves is quick-and-dirty – as when trying to get a couple of more strips in place when it is timer to quit and go home. It is then the mistakes are made. A small measuring error and you force the strip in place anyway – a rush effort to correct the mistake, makes the problem worse, and all of a sudden you have lost an hour, most of your good mood and you realise that you will spend at least as much time tomorrow sorting out the mess. A sound old carpenters advice is: measure twice, cut once.

Always were protective gloves when handling epoxy, solvents, and laquer. Apart from the obvious health issue, it is faster to remove a pair of gloves than to clean the hands from chemicals, and the risk of contaminating sanded wooden parts is minimized.

Always were protective gloves when handling epoxy, solvents, and laquer. Apart from the obvious health issue, it is faster to remove a pair of gloves than to clean the hands from chemicals, and the risk of contaminating sanded wooden parts is minimized.

The real “catastrophies” – finished parts that does not fit, wrinkles in the fiberglass layer, epoxy that does not cure – needs a different approach. The first advice is: do something else for a while. It is far better than rushing in with some desperate rescuing scheme (remember Menckens law: “for every problem there is an obvious, simple and elegant solution – that is utterly wrong”). Sand the hull, sharpen the chisels, clean the workbench, build a seat or something and let the mind wander free. Often unexpected solution present appear from nowhere – solution that cannot be forced by focussing too much (forgive another witty cliché: “logic is a systematic method of arriving at the wrong conclusion with full confidence”. The time spend on tehse side projects is not wasted – it carries the project forward.

It is good to have a few simple tasks waiting for these occasions. Instead of startying a new part of the project or making crusial decisions late in the day, it may be better to use half an hour sanding the rim or preparing some deck hardware.

The last great temptation is to launch the kayak prematurely, before finished and without hardware. It may be OK, perhaps even necessary to keep the enthusiasm flowing – but it is takes som detemination to carry to kayak back into the shop again to continue the finishing tasks. It is tempting to keep using the kayak during the first paddling season, and with fall coming: the epoxy may show the first signs of white shading, or you may have your next kayak in your mind...

Building in a group

Sometimes builders get together to help each other. This can be by sharing a shop and qualify for discounts on materials and shipping, or by forming a building class with an appointed leader.

Sharing shop

The most common and normally with least friction is to share a shop and certain purchases. There may be saving on rent, hating and coordinated transports and purchases. One large shop may be easier to rent than several small. There may be substantial discounts on larger orders on wood, epoxy and fiberglass. Building the same model, often just one set of plans is needed – many designers accept that just the license part is payed for the other builder royalty parts.

There may be some advantages in hours spent – some few tasks are more efficient managed by two than by a single builder working alone. Sometimes discussion solitions and methods speed up the process – all builders does not need to do the same mistakes.

It is important to set at finishing date for such a project. Then the shared part is ended: those who are ready leave, those weho are not, have to slove their situation on their own. You also must devise a system to divide the purchased materials in a way that satisfies all involved – one builders mistakes or unncessary generosity with epoxy must not befall the other in form of expensive complementary purchases.

Building in series

Ett annat sätt är att seriebygga kanoter. Kanotklubbar och organisationer som scouter och friluftsfrämjaravdelningar har byggt på det här sättet. På en byggjigg byggs i följd ett antal skrov, på en annan motsvarande antal däck. Sedan lottas skrov och däck ut och var och en färdigställer sin egen kanot.

This is a very time efficient way to complete a number of kayaks, but with risks involved. The later hulls are often better built then the first, and there is always the risk of fading enthusiasm towards the end with the repetitive tasks. Hulls and decks waiting can warp and be difficult to assemble later. I have had a few such slighly depserate phone calls...

Building course

If someone in the group has built a kayaks before and accepts to assaist the others, the group can sign up as a organised building class and have a small finacial support from the education organisations (at least in Sweden, I do not know about other countries), sometimes also help with shop, tools etc. It is a comfortable solution for the inexperienced. Study plan, tiem and budget must be presented in advance. The course leader have some overall responsibility for materials, tools etc and the wotrk load can be daunting. The inexperienced builder may be less self sufficient in a group than if the were on their own.

But such courses have been arranged annually at several locations in Sweden and the experiences are generally very good.