The kayak has landed

Three hours of building in the shop tonight netted some good progress, which is great because over the past week I have had little time to work on the boat, though I have been eager. Several times it's either been a challenge to fall asleep (thinking about the kayak) or I wake up at 4am and can't go back to sleep (thinking about the kayak). So, I finally had a huge block of time this evening to tackle a few major steps, which resulted in the boat finally taking shape.

The first step(s) involved taking the side panels (with the newly attached scarfs) and bending them into alignment. This is achieved by drilling several 1/16" holes through the wood along the bow and stern and threading copper wire through the holes and twisting. (This is how this kayak construction method gets the name "stitch and glue".) Next I spread the two panels apart with a temporary stick which I cut to length of 23 1/8", as needed to create a maximum kayak width of 23 1/2" (I had to factor in the thickness of each side panel into the spreader stick length). This stick is positioned 111" back from the tip of the bow.

The second major step was to work on the bottom panels by drilling 1/16" holes every 4" exactly 3/8" in from the panel edge. I made another scribe jig to mark the 3/8" distance and then measured off 4" increments. My power drill definitely came in handy, that's about 100 holes around the periphery. A nice thing to note is that the two bottom panels are mirror images, which means that I was able to drill through both panels (stacked) at the same time, saving time and increasing accuracy.

My final step of the evening was to stitch copper wire through both bottom panels along the straight edge, which when unfolded will become the keel of the boat. 

It's so cool to see the shapes and lines of a kayak now, and with each step it looks even more so.